Webinar 1: Perspectives on Humanistic Knowledge

Professor at Arizona State University and Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society

Katina Michael is a professor at Arizona State University, holding a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing, Informatics and Decisions Systems Engineering. She is also the director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. Katina is a senior member of the IEEE and a Public Interest Technology advocate who studies the social implications of technology. In the 1990s, Katina was employed as a senior network planner at Nortel Networks and systems analyst at Andersen Consulting and OTIS. More info

Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California San Diego

Richard Pitt is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California San Diego. A (sociological) social psychologist by training, his research agenda focuses on the construction, maintenance, and atrophy of social identities, particularly professional and religious ones. He is most interested in "category polluters": people who can stake a claim to a social identity in some conventional ways, but "dirty it up" by not being able to—or trying to—fully embrace all of its conventions. As co-PI of an NSF AGEP Alliance, he is analyzing the atrophy of commitment to faculty careers among STEM postdoctoral fellows. His team focuses on points of incoherence between one's important personal identities (e.g., Black person, wife, Christian) and academic-scientist identities (i.e., R1 and PUI STEM faculty), intersections of identity that impact persistence in and attrition from STEM careers in the academy.