About
This is Vera Khovanskaya's website. I am a new faculty member at the Faculty of Information. I am also a faculty affiliate with the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and hold a cross-appointment with the Department of Computer Science and (imminently!) with the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources (CIRHR) at the University of Toronto.
I am the director of the Labour Process and Technology Lab (Labour Lab) at UofT.
I study the role of data tools and technical expertise in workers advocacy organizations. My recent work has examined how unions have used workplace data in the past and how contemporary data tools impact organizing in the present. I also study how worker-centered software is built, specifically attending to the ways that contemporary pathways for technology innovation militate against worker-centered and community-driven technology design.
My research combines qualitative, quantitative, community-driven, and design research approaches with historical analysis in order to make arguments about the long-term implications of applying technical expertise and data-driven methods to address problems in the workplace. My goal is to support workplace activists, organizers, and advocates in accessing and building data tools to accomplish their goals in a sustainable and democratic way.
I was previously a CRA/NSF Postdoctoral Computing Innovation Fellow at UC San Diego where I worked with Lilly Irani. At UCSD, I was a member of the Department of Communication, the Design Lab, the Feminist Labor Lab, and the Just Transitions Initiative. At Cornell, my thesis advisor was Phoebe Sengers. My dissertation committee also featured Karen EC Levy, Adam Seth Litwin, and Lynn Dombrowski. I am an alumna-member of the Culturally Embedded Computing Group, CEmCom.
You can find my publications on Google Scholar.
Contact
Please email me at v.khovanskaya at utoronto dot ca. Please do not email me at my prior UCSD email address as the email will not be received. Feel free and welcome to email me for a .pdf of anything that has my name on it. This site is probably out of date. The research group site may be slightly more current.
Miscellaneous
My website does not use CSS or Javascript. This is an HTML-only website. I believe that this optimizes for accessibility across a range of devices, screen readers, and internet connection capacities. If you are interested, you can read more about HTML-only websites here, about HTML and accessibility here, and about how to work around common accessibility issues with CSS and Javascript here.