Coleen Carrigan
About
Dr. Coleen Carrigan is Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on broadening participation, combating inequities, and enhancing public engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), with a particular emphasis on computing. She uses feminist ethnography to investigate the cultural dimensions of technology and the politics of knowledge and reproduction.
Carrigan’s most recent research inquires into the preferential treatment of technosciences over social sciences in the US and the implications of this epistemic prejudice for gender and racial equity in higher education, the scientific labor force, and society more broadly. She shares her research to help foster collaborations and strengthen alliances between liberal arts scholars, engineers, scientists, activists and policy makers. Carrigan participates in interdisciplinary collaborations committed to justice in science and technology and holding these institutions accountable to commonweal values and democratic oversight. She prepares her students with critical tools to enhance their capacity to civically engage with the grand challenges facing humanity and the planet.
A recipient of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, Carrigan investigates the intersections of gender, race and social values in computing. Prior to joining the University of Virginia, she was an Associate Professor of Anthropology and STS at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She was also a senior manager in the high-tech industry before on-ramping into academia.
Her book, Cracking the Bro Code, is available from MIT Press.
Education
Post-doc University of Washington ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change
PhD University of Washington
MA University of Washington
BA College of the Holy Cross
Using feminist ethnography, I investigate technoscientific culture and cultivate care, communal resistance, and mutual support in the worlds I study to transform not only who gets to produce scientific knowledge but also to reimagine other ways of knowing.