Teaching Experience

At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I am currently engaged in the curricular development and teaching of our Design, Innovation and Society (DIS) major––the world's only design program based in a Science and Technology Studies department and taught largely by social scientists and humanists. 95% of our students are dual majors with another degree, the majority being Mechanical Engineering, but also Electrical Engineering, Business & Management, and others. Teaching these students is an experience like no other: they are  bright, motivated, fascinated by technology and design but willing to be critical and reflexive about their part in the development process.

Before arriving at RPI, I was committed to teaching through my doctoral experience within UCL STS, where I worked as a teaching assistant for four years. I had the privilege of teaching in a broad spectrum of modules, from introductory to advanced undergraduate level including some guest Master's lectures (see 'Lectures' tab). 

When speaking about our work as academics, I understand "teaching” to be the arena where we are most impactful. Though we are primed to speak about the impact of our research, it is in the near-daily interactions with students and the exchanges we have with them that knowledges are created, distended, reformed. This is a belief I cary with me from my doctoral years, when I was primarily responsible for tutorials – small classes (ten to fifteen students) in which we addressed a weekly topic at length and, as such, demand intense engagement from the students. In those tutorials, I encouraged my students to value their own and their colleagues’ experiences as important resources, while engaging with theory and literature to flesh out their ideas and analytical capabilities. Watching them develop critical skills, apply them to new topics, and develop arguments I’d never come across before predicated on intense research was a new kind of joy in academia.

Tutorials I have designed are based on a philosophy of active learning, coaxing participation from students in the guise of mock debates, risk assessment panels, or general roundtable discussions. I’ve extended this engaged learning approach and have been encouraged to take it further in my work with Design where students create projects and “solutions”. We spend lengthy amounts of time discussing what constitutes a “problem” that warrants solving — to whom is it a problem, who is problem to solve it, and how do we not fall into the trappings of technological solutions while still identifying points of leverage and intervention?

I’ve now had a decade’s worth of teaching experiencing. I believe it continues to be one of the best things about my work. Students have praised my courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

“Excellent in all aspects of teaching. Takes the time to work with every student and really makes students feel heard and their input is appreciated in class. Learned a lot about design but also life. One of the most impactful teachers I have had.”

Courses taught

  • Disability, Technology, and Society (graduate seminar)

  • Infrastructure Studies (graduate seminar)

  • Concepts in Science & Technology Studies (graduate seminar)

  • Writing Practicum (graduate level)

  • Senior Project –– capstone course in Design and Society (4000-level capstone course)

  • Infrastructures: Systems and Politics (4000-level course)

  • Governing Emerging Technologies (3000-level course)

  • Studio 1 - Introduction to Design and Representation (1000-level course)

  • Science Policy (1000-level course)

  • Revealing Science (1000-level course)

  • Investigating Science and Society (1000-level course)