Hi! I am Noopur. I am an interdisciplinary researcher interested in understanding global futures of work, the life and work decisions made by immigrant workers in tech companies, changing values and moral norms and projects of personhood especially in postcolonial settings.
Short Bio: I am an Assistant Professor in Information Studies at the Department of Information Studies in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. I am an interdisciplinary scholar trained in Information Studies, HCI, STS, Media Studies and Postcolonial History and I study a range of topics such as the Future of Workers and Work, AI futures for global South/Majority World communities, Big Tech and Change-making to name a few. The best way to reach me is to email at raval [at] seis [dot] ucla [dot] edu.
Past: Until August 2023, I was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz – Silicon Valley Extension in the Computational Media department, working at the AUX Lab with Dr Norman Su. Before that, I was a postdoc researcher at the AI Now Institute at New York University. I received my PhD in Informatics from University of California Irvine (UCI) in September 2020.
I was a CTSP Fellow at UC Berkeley (2020-21). I was a Technology, Law and Society Fellow (2017-18) at UC Irvine and an alumna of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (2016-17). I also used to run a mentor list for international students looking to apply to PhD programs. I still mentor prospective students on an individual basis. In a past life, I worked with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Center for Internet & Society (CIS), Bangalore on ‘Access to Knowledge’ programs.
For potential collaborators and students looking to work with me:
I am broadly interested in research projects that interrogate the impact of emerging technologies in shaping *not only* the economic conditions of paid work but also paid and unpaid care work, and networks of kinship and solidarity that form around, within and outside platforms. I am predominantly interested in tracking how technological participation changes gendered norms, class and caste hierarchies and social life in urban spaces, especially outside of the US and Western Europe.