things that are happening or have happened
Exhibiting in THE BODY Fall 2027
The human body has been the subject matter of art since the first piece of charcoal dragged along a cave wall. PAC invites artists to explore THE BODY: its symbolism, its complexity, its abstractions. The body is a living machine, a complex marvel of systems and contradictions. It's a vessel to carry children, to grow old, to elicit lust, envy, and disgust. The body and its representations are complex, beautiful, harrowing, failing, objectified, horrifying, wonderful, mysterious and so much more.
Student led presentation “Co-Creating Tools for Workers Who Are Blind Using Sociotechnical and Ethnographic Approaches.” Paper presented at workshop at the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS conference, Denver, Colorado, 26 October 2025. Authors: Paul Ruvolo, Caitrin Lynch, Sam Michalka, L.E. Horgan, Chelsea Andrews, Isabela Sanchez Taipe, Ethan Alford, Charles Mawn, Ryan Thrasher, Daniel Theunissen, Zara Coakley. Publication forthcoming. https://assistivetechnologiesatwork2025.init-owl.de/
Invited Speaker for University of Michigan Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing Symposium: Residues or What Remains April 12th & 13th 2024
Invited talk for Science Studies Colloquium at UC San Diego, February 12th, 2024
Invited talk White House Office of Energy Justice & Equity, Justice Week 2023 Panel on EJ and Relational Justice, October 31, 2023
Invited talk at uOttowa 3/28/23 ___________________Becoming Data-Driven Data as Deferral and Doing Data Otherwise
Panel Talk: “A Typology of Government Agency EJ Data Tools and a Relational Approach to Environmental Justice Communication,” AAG 2023 March 2023
Invited presentation: Humanistic Design Speaker Series at Princeton’s Keller Center: Becoming Data-Driven: Designing, Administering, and Resisting the Smart City February 2023
Panel Talk: at 4S Cholula Panel on Datafication: Data as Deferral: Asserting Unknowing / Uncertainty December 2022
Discussion with Carl DiSalvo and Lily Irani on Design and Democracy May 2022
Interview with Rebecca Williams for Harvard’s Belfer Center April 2021
Interview: in Boston Compass Magazine: “Subvert and Destroy” February 2021
Invited talk: Folding Horizons: a conversation with Leah Horgan on smart cities, surveillance, and data-driven governance December 2020 Hosted by soft/WALL/studs
writing and talking
Ruvolo, Paul, L.E. Horgan, Caitrin Lynch, and Chelsea Andrews. 2026. “Educating Responsible Technologists: Integrating AI and Social Sciences via Immersive Learning Modules,” American Society for Engineering Education.
Horgan, L.E.. 2026. “Data as Deferral: Resources, Risk, & Reformism in the Los Angeles Homelessness Initiatives,” under review.
Horgan, Leah, and Cindy Lin. 2026. “Bureaucratic Vision: Ethnographic Studies of Digital Twinning to Assess Crisis” under review.
Horgan, Leah, Stephanie Pease, Carla Nyquist, Ruth Mekennon, Vasiliki Pistoftzian, Kourtney Bichotte-Dunner, Ashley Varghese, Ean Tafoya, Sara Wylie, Katherine Dickinson. 2025. “The Obligation to Know vs. the Right to Know: Developing a Relational Approach to EJ Communication and Datafication.” Science, Technology, & Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439251388748
Horgan, Leah, Kira Mok, Eliza Boetsch, Sophie Kelly, Katherine Dickinson, Eric Nost, Roseann Bongiavanni, Sara Wylie. 2023. “What does Chelsea Creek Do For You? A Relational Approach to Environmental Justice Communication.” Environmental Justice, March, env.2022.0081. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2022.0081.
Kathleen Pine, Claus Bossen, Naja Holten Møller, Milagros Miceli, Alex Jiahong Lu, Yunan Chen, Leah Horgan, Zhaoyuan Su, Gina Neff, and Melissa Mazmanian. 2022. Investigating Data Work Across Domains: New Perspectives on the Work of Creating Data. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 87, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503724
Horgan, Leah. 2021. “The Everyday of Future-Avoiding: Data-drivenness in the Smart City.” Information and Culture, Special Issue.
Rahman, Shakeer and Leah Horgan. 2021 “A New AI Lexicon: Surveillance,” AI NOW Institute.
Horgan, Leah and Paul Dourish. 2018. Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Activism: Data Organizing Inside the Institution. Krisis, Issue 1.
Ford, Colin, Daniel Gardner, Leah Elaine Horgan, Calvin Liu, A. M. Tsaasan, Bonnie A. Nardi, Jordan Rickman. 2017. “Chat Speed OP PogChamp: Practices of Coherence in Massive Twitch Chat.” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 858-871. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3052765
Okune, Angela and Leah Horgan, “Already Global Local”: Complicating Notions of Technological Innovation and Expertise in Africa,” Paper presented at Strategic Narratives of Technology and Africa Conference, M-ITI, Portugal, September 2017.
select talks
Invited Speaker for University of Michigan Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing Symposium: Residues or What Remains, April 12th & 13th 2024
“Data as Deferral and Doing Data Otherwise,” Invited talk for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, February 2024, UC San Diego.
Panel: Towards Relational Justice in Energy Systems,” Invited talk for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity 2023 Justice Week, October 31st.
Leah Horgan, “Data as Deferral and Doing Data Otherwise,” Invited talk for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, March 28th 2023, Ottowa University.
Leah Horgan, “Becoming Data-Driven: Designing, Administering, and Resisting the Smart City,” Invited talk for the Humanistic Design Speaker Series, February 6th 2023, Princeton University.
Leah Horgan, “Data as Deferral: Asserting Unknowing and Uncertainty,” Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Conference, Dec 7 – 11, 2022, Cholula.
Leah Horgan and Kavita Philip, “DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT: From Evidence-based to Data-driven,” on panel “Power in Relation: Digital Technologies Across Geography and Scale,” Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Conference, Oct 6 – 8, 2021, Toronto (Remote).
Leah Horgan, “Folding Horizons: a Conversation with Leah Horgan on Smart Cities, Surveillance, and Data-driven Governance,” Invited talk presented remotely to the soft/WALL/studs collective, Singapore, December 5th, 2020.
Leah Horgan, “Smart Cities and Surveillance,” Invited talk presented remotely to the Labor Tech Research Network, October 9th, 2020.
Leah Horgan, “From Evidence-based Policymaking to Data-Driven Governance,” Paper presented at AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, November 2019.
Horgan, Leah and Cindy Lin. “Look, But Don’t Touch: Bureaucratic Vision and Administering the Margins.” Paper presented at the 4S Meeting, New Orleans, September 2019 and the Data Power Conference, University of Bremen, Bremen Germany September 2019. Full paper forthcoming.
Leah Horgan, “The Everyday of Future-Avoiding: Data-drivenness in the Smart City,” American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., April 2018.
Leah Horgan, “Experimentality in Data-Driven Governance.” Data Justice Conference, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales May 2018.
Horgan, Leah and Paul Dourish, “The Organizational Infrastructures of Urban Data,” Paper presented at the 5th Innovation in Information Infrastructures (III) Workshop, LUISS Rome, Italy, November 2017.
Horgan, Leah and Paul Dourish, “Making the Future of the City: The Future Perfect Smart City” Paper presented at 4S Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, August 2017.
teaching
ENVIRONMENT, TECHNOLOGY, & SOCIETY Transformative Futures
The design and control of nature was a central theme in the development of modern science and technology. Today however, we are confronted daily with nature seemingly out of control–from heatwaves and wildfires to flooding and droughts. How did we get here? What is the human role in these events, and how is industrialization, government, and the advancement of design, science, and technology related to our transforming environmental conditions? This interdisciplinary course draws on social theory, environmental history, anthropology and sociology, tactical art and design, and science and technology studies to investigate the pressing questions of present day environmental issues. Throughout the course, we will examine how these environmental issues intersect with broader themes of social justice and explore how scientists and engineers are adapting their fields to confront these challenges head-on. Through visual art and group-based design exercises, this course will introduce you to critical making practices, enabling you to recognize, invent, and describe new approaches to environmental technologies and social relations. By the end of this course, you will gain a deeper understanding of key themes in science and technology studies and develop the ability to critically analyze contemporary social issues related to environmental health, justice, and economic development. This course aims to empower you to think creatively and make meaningful contributions to environmental and social change.
DATA, DESIGN, DISASTER!
A Critical Data/Design Studies Seminar
Data is world-making and deeply affects our everyday lives. In this course we’ll trace the evolution of data and data technology design as a tool of control used in governance, science, and industry -- from early empires to our current era of AI. We will explore how data practices have been instrumental in shaping major disasters of our lifetime; the rise and fall of empires; the (mis)functioning of modern nation-states; our collective conceptions of the body, health, gender, sexuality, race, class, labor, and expertise; increasingly ubiquitous surveillance; and the way we address complex social problems ranging from poverty to environmental crises. Through critical analysis of key readings and real world examples, students will gain a deep understanding of the intricate relationship between data, politics, and the potential for data-driven technologies to either empower or oppress. This is a seminar style course that incorporates design research and speculative design approaches for major assignments.