Sociologist of data analytics and emerging technologies
Taylor M. Cruz, PhD is a sociologist of science, technology, and medicine. She studies the societal dimensions of data analytics and artificial intelligence, with a strong focus on power, inequality, and social justice. She draws on qualitative and ethnographic methods to understand how people work with technologies across social contexts. Her scholarship appears in venues such as Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science & Medicine, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (ESTS), and Big Data & Society, and has received awards from the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her ethnographic research on emerging technologies has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Taylor is Associate Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston. She was previously Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Fullerton, where she founded the Health, Tech, and Society Lab to study issues in science, technology, and medicine affecting marginalized communities. She received her PhD in Sociology from University of California, San Francisco, where she received the Diana Forsythe Dissertation Award for Social Studies of Science, Technology, and Health. She remains an active affiliate with the UCSF Emancipatory Sciences Lab.
Recent scholarship: “A Sociology of Artificial Intelligence: Inequalities, Power, and Data Justice”
