Lucy Suchman, Ph.D. is Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. She has taught several courses including Virtual Cultures, Anthropology of Cybercultures, and Gender, Sexuality and Society. These courses included instruction on new forms of information and communications media, the quality of digital artifacts, and issues concerning feminists in media research. Before coming to Lancaster, she worked for 22 years at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, where she held the positions of Principal Scientist and Manager of the Work Practice and Technology laboratory. Suchman is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, obtaining her BA in 1972, MA in 1977 and a Doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology in 1984. Suchman's book, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-machine Communication (1987), provided intellectual foundations for the field of human-computer interaction. She challenged common assumptions behind the design of interactive systems with a cogent anthropological argument that human action is constantly constructed and reconstructed from dynamic interactions with the material and social worlds. The theory of situated cognition emphasizes the importance of the environment as an integral part of the cognitive process. She has made fundamental contributions to ethnographic analysis, conversational analysis and Participatory Design techniques for the development of interactive computer systems. An updated version of the book was published in 2007. This second edition, called Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action, included five new chapters exploring developments in the field of computing and social studies technology since the mid-1980s. Specifically, Suchman addressed the relationship and interactions between humans and machines with a focus on the new humanlike machines.
Feminist research at the digital/material boundary
This talk draws on recent scholarship at the intersection of feminist science and technology studies and design, to explore the interface of digital media and other forms of materiality. Feminist scholarship makes a compelling case for an understanding of the inseparability of the meaning and matter, the virtual and the actual.
In my own work I consider how capacities for action are currently figured at the human-machine interface, and how they might be imaginatively and materially reconfigured.
I argue for the value of research aimed at understanding the relationship between humans and machines without resorting either to too easy erasure of differences, or to essentialist divides. This requires expanding our unit of analysis, while recognizing the inevitable cuts through which the boundaries of technological systems are defined. Based on my experience in worlds of technology research and development, I argue that these reconceptualisations have both practical and political implications for technical innovation.