School of Social and Political Science

Background

My research and teaching interests focus on open and administrative data, automation in social services, activists' data practices, civil society and democracy, social justice and the city, cultural mapping, and libraries of things. I use methods of participant observation, interviews, GIS and participatory mapping, drawing from the fields of STS, media studies, information studies, critical data studies and critical cartography.

I earned a Ph.D. in Information Studies from University of California, Los Angeles, in 2017. I have a MLIS from the University of California, Los Angeles (2016) and a Masters in New Media from the University of Amsterdam (2010). Prior to my Lectureship I was was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Spring

Data, Design & the City (not running in 2021/2022)

Postgraduate

Autumn

Technologies of Civic Participation 

Spring 

Internet, Society & Economy 

Publications

Books

Currie, M. & Miranda, M. (2021). The Culture & Communities Mapping Project. Palgrave.

Currie, M., J. Knox & C. McGregor (eds.). (2022). Data Justice & the Right to the City. University of Edinburgh Press.

Refereed Articles

Currie, M., and Podoletz, L. (2023). Emotions and Dynamic Assemblages: A Study of Automated Social Security Using Qualitative Longitudinal Research. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1101–1111. https://doi.org/10.1145/3593013.3594066

Hemment, D., Currie, M., Bennett, SJ, Elwes, J., Ridler, A., Sinders, C., Vidmar, M., Hill, R., and Warner, H.( 2023). AI in the Public Eye: Investigating Public AI Literacy Through AI Art. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 931–942. https://doi.org/10.1145/3593013.3594052

Crooks, R. & Currie, M. (2021). Numbers will not save us: Agonistic data practices. The Information Society. DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2021.1920081

Currie, M. & M. Correa (2021). Tangibles, intangibles and other tensions in the Culture & Communities Mapping Project. Cultural Trends. 10 May. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2021.1910491

Currie, M. (2020). Data as performance - showcasing the city through open data maps. Big Data & Society. 7:1. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720907953.

Currie, M. & U. W. F. Hsu (2019). Performative data: Cultures of Government Data Practice. Journal of Cultural Analytics. 13 August 2019. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/32utx.

Currie, M., B. Paris, & Donovan, J. (2019) "What difference do data make? Data management and social change", Online Information Review, https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-02-2018-0052

Currie, M., & B. Paris. (2018). Back-ups for the future. Archival practices for data activism. Archives & Manuscripts. June.

Currie, M., B. Paris, I. Pasquetto, and J. Pierre (2016). The conundrum of police officer-involved homicides: Counter-data in Los Angeles County. Big Data & Society. 3.2: 2053951716663566. bds.sagepub.com.

Fidler, B., & Currie, M. (2016). Infrastructure, Representation, and Historiography in BBN’s Arpanet Maps. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 38(3), 44–57. https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2015.69.

Fidler, B. and M. Currie (2015). The Production and interpretation of ARPANET maps. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 37(1), 44-55, January-March, DOI: 10.1109/MAHC.2015.16.

Kelty, C., A. Panofsky, R. Crooks, M. Currie, S. Erickson, P. Garcia, S. Wood, and M. Wartenbe (2014). Seven dimensions of contemporary participation disentangled. Journal of the American Society for Information and Technology, 66(3), 474–488. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23202

Book Chapters

Paris, B., M. Currie, I. Pasquetto, and J. Pierre. (forthcoming 2022). Data Burdens: Epistemologies of Evidence in Police Reform and Abolition Movements. In Currie, M., J. Knox & C. McGregor (eds.). Data Justice & the Right to the City. University of Edinburgh Press.

Currie, M. (2018). Hacking administration: A report from Los Angeles. In Hunsinger J. and A. Schrock (eds.), Making Our World: The Hacker and Maker Movements in Context, New York: Peter Lang.

Currie, M. (2012). The feminist critique: Mapping controversy in Wikipedia. In Berry, D. M. (ed.), Understanding Digital Humanities, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 224-248.

Op-Eds, Proceedings, & Book Reviews

Pierre, J., R. Crooks, M. Currie, B. Paris, I. Pasquetto. (2021). Getting Ourselves Together: Epistemic Burden and Data-centered Participatory Design Research. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. May. Article No.: 406 Pages 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445103. (Best Paper Award)

Currie, M, & Catanzariti, B. (2020). Data Politics: Drag, Deepfakes and the Taming of Technology. The New Real Magazine. 14 October.

Currie, M (2020). Explainer: How DeepFakes Are Impacting Society. The New Real Magazine. 14 October.

Lyons, C & M. Currie (2019). Easy Sharing: A sharing-economy pilot service in areas of multiple deprivation in West Edinburgh. P. Travlou & L. Ciolfi (Eds.). Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies Conference Proceedings. University of Edinburgh, 25 October. ISBN 978-1-912669-11-0.

Niker, F, Himmelreich, J, Feldman, J, & Currie, M. (2019). Coding Caring Workshop Report. Focused study for the Stanford AI100 Report. Stanford University, 28-29 May.

Currie, M. (2018). A dual valuation of open government. Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research. Delft, The Netherlands, 30 May – 1 June.

Paris , B. S., and Currie, M. (2018). Buried, altered, silenced: 4 ways government climate information has changed since Trump took office, The Conversation, 21 March. http://theconversation.com/buried-altered-silenced-4-ways-government-climate-information-has-changed-since-trump-took-office-92323

Currie, M. (2017). The datafication of transparency work: A report from Los Angeles. Proceedings for the Interactions Symposium on Big Data. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 13(2). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/73j1q5sp.

Paris, B. S., Currie, M., Donovan, J. (2017). Grand intentions, small interventions: Climate data rescue as counter-data action. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. Estonia 18 - 21 October.

Paris, B. S., and Currie, M. (2017). How the “guerrilla archivists” saved history – and are doing it again under Trump. The Conversation, February 21. http://theconversation.com/how-the-guerrilla-archivists-saved-history-and-are-doing-it-again-under-trump-72346.

Currie, M., B. Paris, I. Pasquetto, J. Pierre, and A. Sands. (2015). The Police officer-involved homicide database project. Proceedings to the 2015 iConference, Newport, CA.

Fidler, B. and M. Currie (2015). Gateways: Historical underpinnings of a single Internet. Proceedings to the 2015 iConference, Newport Beach, CA.

Currie, M. (2015). Review: Open standards and the digital age: History, ideology, and networks by Andrew L. Russell. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 11(2), Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/19d2h79x.

Currie, M. (2013). Review: Paper machines: About cards & catalogs, 1548-1929 by Markus Krajewski. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 9(1), Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/07h1s2w7.