Welcome! This guide offers an overview of how we approach research, how we advise thesis students, and the kinds of topics that interest us. It also outlines the steps to take if you’re interested in writing your thesis with our lab.
This document is under development. If you have any feedback or questions, please let us know!
We’re broadly interested in how technologies shape our lives and societies—and how we might design technologies to improve them. Our research explores the intersection of technology and societal change, using methods from data analysis, experiments, statistics, machine learning, natural language processing, prototyping, audits, interaction studies, and plain old writing.
Our work combines three key ingredients — a method, a technology, and its social impact:
Our projects typically evolve around a digital technology that is becoming deeply embedded in society—such as AI language models, social media recommender systems, or search engines. We investigate how these systems impact our political institutions, cognitive capacities, and cultural and economic structures, using methods outlined above. We want to understand what could go wrong—from algorithmic discrimination to cognitive atrophy and widening inequality—but we’re equally curious about how technology might help us build more just, informed, and participatory societies.
In past research projects and theses, we've explored questions such as:
You can get a better sense of our research interests and methods by browsing our publications. Our projects typically combine technical work—such as data analysis or system development—with social science theories and methods. We do mixed methods, but we usually do not advise purely qualitative work. If you want to write a qualitative thesis, take a look at Eva Hornecker’s group.
We also support thesis projects with practical applications, including collaborations with startups, NGOs, or other external organizations. If you’re interested in working on an applied project, let us know. For inspiration, you might also explore what’s being published at relevant venues like ACM CHI, ACM FAccT, or IC2S2.
There are many ways to advise a thesis—and finding a good fit in advising style is just as important as finding a good fit in topic. To get a sense of how we work, I recommend joining one of our classes or projects. But here’s how I generally think about the thesis process:
In my view your thesis is a journey that starts with your curiosity. Something that puzzles you, something that annoys you, something that you want to learn more or do something about. You start making that curiosity more specific and concrete - drawing on the related scientific literature and conversations that you have with your peers, with us, and your pen. Your goal is to use a method or approach to learn something new—and to have something interesting to say about it. Then you find a way to say it, in data and in writing.
Much of the difficulty lies in the beginning: most interesting questions are too vague at first, and saying something interesting about a vague idea is almost impossible within the scope of a thesis. So we start into a research project with a preparation phase where you narrow down your ideas into a research question that is specific and answerable within the scope of a thesis. In this phase, we’ll be pushing you to sharpen your question and clarify your project’s motivation: Why does this question matter? Why should anyone care about the answer? We’ll also help you find the right "altitude"—the right balance between ambition and feasibility—and point you toward ideas or connections you may not have considered.