Ongoing Research Projects
Border making and information infrastructures
Research conducted in this area examines iterative data capture, processing, and circulation as core processes in the articulation of sovereignty. As border and immigration enforcement draw from an ever-growing information infrastructure, the task ahead is to understand the relations that made these possible and, conversely, the relations that infrastructures make. This has led us to explore, for example, how national, racial, and political boundaries shape and are shaped by sociotechnical arrangements.
Computing Américas
This research area is devoted to documenting and analyzing the practices and cultures of computing across the American hemisphere with a distinct focus on Latin America and Latina/o/es. Current work in this area relates to Dr. Chaar López' project titled Border Circuits. The project deals with the history of computer manufacturing across the US-México borderlands through the experiences, practices, and ideas of multiple communities including U.S. and Mexican factory administrators, Mexican women workers, and Mexican government officials. The BTL is also conducting historical research on Central Texas' semiconductor industry since the 1980s and the growing establishment of data centers for artificial intelligence. This project is about technology and infrastructure with semiconductors and data centers being our boundary objects, moving across communities of practice and living.
Digital Labor, Artificial Intelligence, and Precarity
Research in this area examines labor arrangements in information infrastructures and the politics embedded in labor management platforms--from human relations efforts on people analytics to data work. Our biggest concern is to interrogate the racial ordering of technological solutionism, or how the belief in technological development and use, as means for human improvement, are entangled with discriminatory practices.