Bio

Post-doc University of Washington ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change PhD University of WashingtonMA University of WashingtonBA 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."

Coleen Carrigan, PhD

 

Dr. Coleen Carrigan is Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society (STS) 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 forthcoming from MIT Press.

Awards

  • National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award: Valuing the Social in Engineering and Computer Science. EEC 1751314 2018-present
  • College Award, Early Career Achievement for Excellence in Scholarship 2018
  • American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Educational Research and Methods Division Best Diversity Paper Award 2017
  • University of Washington, Project for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Fellowship 2014

Research Interests

  • Cultural Anthropology
  • STS
  • Feminism
  • Ethnography
  • Medical Anthropology
  • Engineering Education
  • Broadening Participation
  • Critical Methodologies

Featured Grants & Projects

  • NSF Collaborative Research: National Research Traineeship Program – Innovations in Graduate Education

    The NAVIGATE Project: A Case-Study Approach to Overcoming Barriers to Advancement for Women in STEM. DGE 1735218


    The NAVIGATE Project aims to increase the number of women STEM graduates who persist in their chosen disciplines, and achieve leadership roles. It is an innovative program that relies on Case Study Teaching Methods to increase the skills of STEM women and non-binary scholars to navigate effectively past instances of bias, inequity or discrimination in the workforce and catalyze collective resistance to these injustices. The NAVIGATE Project was active from 2017 – 2021 with fundings from an NSF Division for Graduate Education award (DGE-1735218).

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  • NSF ADVANCE Plan-D Award

    Launching Academics on the Tenure-Track: An Intentional Community in Engineering (LATTICE). EES 14-573


    Launching Academics on the Tenure-Track: an Intentional Community in Engineering (LATTICE), a collaboration between the University of Washington, North Carolina State University, and California Polytechnic State University, was a national program to advance faculty diversity in engineering. LATTICE included a professional development intervention and a research study to understand how scholars from a range of disciplines and social identities collaborate to transform engineering culture. LATTICE was active from 2015 - 2020 with funding from an NSF ADVANCE award (EES-1500310).

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