I’m a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist with a PhD from the Social Anthropology department of the University of Cambridge.
I study how people who work with images look together and against each other, and how technology transforms, challenges and replaces that expertise.
My doctoral research examined how text-to-image generative AI is reshaping the political economy of artistic labour in the US illustration industry, drawing on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork in New York City. I’m currently turning it into a book, The Image People: Vision, Labour and Technology in the US Illustration Industry. My next project looks at the evidentiary practices and technological expertise of open-source investigators in human rights organisations.
My work has appeared in Signs and Society, the CHI Conference and the Journal of Illustration, and in public venues such as Eye on Design and It’s Nice That. I’ve also interned at Microsoft Research New England and volunteered with Amnesty International Digital Verification Corps.
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