Senior Researcher and AIMLab Project Director

Tamara Kneese

Tamara Kneese is a senior researcher and project director of Data & Society’s AIMLab. Before joining D&S, she was lead researcher at Green Software Foundation, director of developer engagement on the green software team at Intel, and assistant professor of media studies and director of gender and sexualities studies at the University of San Francisco. Her first book, Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond, was published by Yale University Press in August 2023.

Tamara’s research juxtaposes histories of computing and automation with ethnographies of platform labor. She’s currently writing about AI’s relationship to both labor rights and environmental impacts. Her work has been published in academic journals including Social Text and Social Media + Society and in popular outlets including LARB, The Verge, The Atlantic, and Logic Magazine. In her spare time, Tamara is an organizer with the Tech Workers Coalition. She holds a PhD from NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.