ABOUT ME
Hello! Thanks for visiting my website. I'm a PhD candidate in communication whose research focuses on issues of equity, justice, and environmental impacts of our digital worlds. I'm currently writing a dissertation on the local politics and environmental impacts of Amazon's material footprint in Southern California (where they have lots of warehouses) and Northern Virginia (also known as data center alley).
If you share similar interests and want to collaborate on a project, or simply want to say hello, please drop me an email or DM. I love to meet new folks!
Bio (short):
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Lauren Bridges is a Ph.D. candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She researches the social and environmental impacts of the infrastructures which underlie our digital worlds. Bridges has published in New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society, and received awards and honorary mentions from International Communication Association, National Communication Association, and the Association for Internet Researchers. She holds an M.A. in creative writing, publishing, and editing from the University of Melbourne and a B.A. in business from Queensland University of Technology. Prior to Annenberg, she worked in academic publishing and the nonprofit sector with a focus on social policy.
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Bio (longer):
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Lauren Bridges is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. She researches the social and environmental impacts of big data infrastructures, with a focus on "the cloud" and what kinds of surveillance regimes, labor relations, and environmental impacts it makes possible and what it obscures.
Her academic writing has been published in journals such as New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society. Her work has received academic awards and honorary mentions from associations such as the International Communication Association, National Communication Association, and the Association of Internet Researchers. In addition to her academic writing, Bridges has written for The Guardian, been interviewed on BBC Newsday, NPR's 1A, the Anti-Dystopians podcast, and NBC (here and here).
Bridges is co-PI of a 2-year grant from the Internet Society, "Greening from the Margins: the Geopolitics of Extractive, Operational, and Post-Consumer E-waste management" tracing the global flows of e-waste throughout the tech supply chain. She holds an M.A. in communication from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in creative writing, publishing, and editing from the University of Melbourne, and a B.A. in business from Queensland University of Technology. Prior to starting her PhD at Annenberg, she worked in academic publishing and the nonprofit sector with a focus on social policy.