Webmoor

I am an anthropologist of technology, science, and design. I investigate the material practices of designing and assembling visual media in the social sciences. Which means I study material and visual artefacts and the processes leading to their ‘sedimentation’. My case studies involve archaeology, an exemplary visualising discipline that relies upon making visible its subject matter, as well as academic eResearch labs programming new web-based visualisations. This mix of case studies emerged from my work as an anthropological archaeologist and founding member of the Stanford Metamedia Lab (merged with the Stanford Humanities Lab). Here we took a critical but hands-on design approach to computer-mediated engagement with the past. Woven through these empirical studies, I theorise about the changing ontology of visualised evidence and information.

I was born and raised in the mountain state of Colorado in the US. After my undergraduate work at the University of Colorado I ran archaeological survey crews in the wilderness and Great Plains for the US Forest Service. My reliance upon and love for wayfinding with maps (pre-GPS!) during these years led me to pursue graduate work on the relations between visual media and material practices. On a scholarship I left cultural resource management (CRM) to study at University College London. Afterwards I returned to the states to pursue a PhD at Stanford University in anthropology. This work on practices with visual media increasingly led me into the field of Science and Technology Studies. I subsequently took a research fellowship back in the UK to deepen this understanding within an STS department at Oxford University. I try and get back to the Rocky Mountains whenever I can to ski, camp and climb with my family – Amy, Jonas and Camdyn.