Assistant Professor, Information
About
Dr. Michaelanne Thomas is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan where she directs the Anthropology & Technology Lab (ATL) research group. Thomas received her PhD in human-centered computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and her MA in cultural anthropology from Georgia State University. A sociotechnical anthropologist, Thomas works at the intersection of culture and technology, using ethnographic methods to study how marginalized communities collaboratively design, access, and participate with information communication technologies (ICTs) in politically and resource-constrained contexts. Her primary fieldsite is Havana, Cuba, where she has been investigating the collaborative creation of internet ecosystems since 2014. Her work has been published and awarded in top venues, such as CHI, CSCW, WWW, and The Society for the Social Studies of Science, and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, New Scientist, Motherboard, CNN, Reuters, and Vice, among others.
