About
danah boyd’s research is focused on addressing social and cultural inequities by understanding the relationship between technology and society. In 2020, she is spending most of her time examining dynamics surrounding the US census to ask two questions: 1) what makes data legitimate? 2) what is involved in securing data infrastructure? Much of this work centers on questions of data quality and the challenges of integrating differential privacy into contemporary disclosure avoidance procedures.
She is the author of “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (opens in new tab)” and “Participatory Culture in a Networked Era (opens in new tab)“. In 2013, she founded Data & Society (opens in new tab), a research institute in NYC where she currently serves as the Founder/President. She is a 2011 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Director of both Crisis Text Line and Social Science Research Council, and a Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian. She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University, a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab, and a Ph.D. in Information from the University of California, Berkeley.