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Semaan, Bryan

Associate Professor

Positions

Research Areas research areas

Research

research overview

  • Bryan utilizes his training from HCI, CSCW, and social computing, to examine the role of technology in enabling resilience amongst people immersed in challenging contexts (e.g. people’s experiences with racism and stereotyping and refugees integrating into new sociocultural contexts). Resilience is defined as how people bounce back from threat or vulnerability. He seeks out contexts where he can explore the relationship between technology and resilience and that allow him to better understand how people actively use ICTs in the production of resilience. He especially focuses on those contexts where people might be unable to generate resilience with ICTs, or where the present design of ICTs and other social systems can produce additional threat or vulnerability in people’s lives (e.g. algorithms, facial recognition software, governance, and social media). Broadly, he seeks to understand, critique, and create ethical, moral, and just technology.

keywords

  • Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Social Computing, Social Justice, Race, Race and Technology, Science and Technology Studies, Design, Digital Identity, Resilience

Publications

selected publications

Teaching

courses taught

  • INFO 1111 - Introduction to Information Science: Understanding the World Through Data
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2023
    Provides a hands-on survey of key concepts and theories in Information Science, including the nature of information, everyday experience of data, technologies that generate data, and how data are conveyed and represented. Students will critically examine texts, systems, and interpretations of data from multidisciplinary perspectives. Through design explorations, activities, and group projects, students will develop facility representing and transforming information.
  • INFO 4620 - Race and Technology
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2023 / Spring 2024
    This course is designed with the understanding that race and racial inequality have been central to how societies and societal systems of power have been shaped and reshaped over time. Students will critically examine how race is created by and through sociotechnical systems. Students will explore how the design, implementation, and use of digital platforms and their data continue to perpetuate and embody white, cisgender, heteronormative systems of power. This course will cover a wide range of foundational and emergent scholarship�giving voice to Scholars of Color�providing students with a foundation through which they can continue to critique and explore sociotechnical and other societal arrangements more broadly. Degree credit not granted for this course and INFO 5620.
  • INFO 4871 - Special Topics
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2022
    Special topics.
  • INFO 5620 - Race and Technology
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2023 / Spring 2024
    This course is designed with the understanding that race and racial inequality have been central to how societies and societal systems of power have been shaped and reshaped over time. Students will critically examine how race is created by and through sociotechnical systems. Students will explore how the design, implementation, and use of digital platforms and their data continue to perpetuate and embody white, cisgender, heteronormative systems of power. This course will cover a wide range of foundational and emergent scholarship�giving voice to Scholars of Color�providing students with a foundation through which they can continue to critique and explore sociotechnical and other societal arrangements more broadly. Degree credit not granted for this course and INFO 4620.
  • INFO 5871 - Special Topics
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2022
    Topics will vary by semester.
  • INFO 6201 - Interdisciplinary Ways of Knowing
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2022
    Introduces principles of research design and surveys the breadth of research methods appropriated by the field of information science. Students will explore the diversity of epistemological orientations that make up the field, that influence the types of often mixed research methods applied and that shape the kinds of questions that are and are not explored.
  • INFO 6500 - Information Science Seminar
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2022 / Spring 2023
    Enculturates graduate students in the discipline of Information Science through weekly seminar series that hosts guest speakers, internal faculty and graduate speakers and other community building and professional development activities. May be repeated up to 8 credit hours.
  • INFO 6940 - Supervised Master's Research Project
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2023 / Spring 2024
    Students enrolling in this course will conduct supervised research in Information Science under the supervision of one or more faculty advisors, to include preparation of academic literature reviews, laboratory or field experiments, surveys or interviews with technology stakeholders, interface or system design and development, system evaluation, or other examples of rigorous scholarship in the discipline of Information Science. Some research projects may be carried out in collaboration with other graduate students and faculty members. Although contribution to publishable scholarship (e.g., posters, demonstrations, conference papers, or journal articles) is one possible outcome of this educational experience, the student and his/her advisor(s) may agree to determine alternate mechanisms for assessing mastery of the academic research process, depending on the scope of work carried out as part of this experience, the publishability of the research, and the specific needs and career goals of the student.

Background

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geographic focus

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