Research

Photo: Generated by ideogram.io

AIdeology: Cultural Models of Language in Language Models

This project examines how cultural beliefs about language (language ideologies) shape the development, regulation, and social impact of Large Language Models (LLMs). Through ethnographic studies of EU regulation, compliance efforts, and local LLM development, the research aims to understand how AI technologies transform human communication and culture while developing methods that combine ML and linguistic anthropology.

Photo: Anna Weichselbraun

Technologies of Truth and Trust: Prefigurative Politics among Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts

This research investigates how blockchain and cryptocurrency communities imagine and enact alternative infrastructures of trust. Through fieldwork with technologists, activists, and entrepreneurs, I examine the social, ethical, and political stakes of decentralization, transparency, and automation. By taking a follow-the-thing perspective on trust-mediating technologies, this project situates blockchain in a longue durée history of technical artifacts and security practices that have similarly sought to solve problems of uncertainty.

To develop this project, I am a sometime contributor to the interdisciplinary research collective The Metagovernance Project. Check out this analysis and tooling kit for DAO constitutions to which I contributed linguistic and discursive analysis.

Photo: Schölla Schwarz

Knowledge Practices of Nuclear Safeguards Inspectors at the IAEA

This research provides an intimate view of the practices and activities of nuclear safeguards inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and connects these quotidian practices to the geopolitics of nuclear governance. It investigates the question of the organization's political legitimacy through the capacity for the bureaucracy to produce objective knowledge with a particular look at the semiotic affordances of technicalness.