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 at the University of Toronto.
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.11/14/2023 - (scheduled) Guest Lecture in Special Topics: Justice Through Design at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
10/14/2023 - Co-organized a workshop at CSCW 2023 titled "Back to 'Back to Labor': Revisiting Political Economies of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work"
08/29/2023 - Guest talk at the Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab
03/30/2023 - Guest talk at CHIWORK - Conversations on Human-Computer Interaction for Work, "Building the Cyberunion: Data Practices in the Labor Movement with Vera Khovanskaya and Naveena Karusala"
03/29/2023 - Guest Lecture in the Ethics of Data Science at NYU Steinhardt
03/28/2023 - Guest Lecture in the Books to Blockchain Humanities Lab at the NYU Center for Humanities
02/24/2023 - Invited talk at the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto
02/21/2023 - Invited talk at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
02/16/2023 - Guest Lecture in HCI 220 Ethics and Activism in Technology and Design at the University of California, Santa Cruz
02/09/2023 - Invited talk at the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at The University of Washington
01/10/2023 - Invited talk at the Department of Communication & Media Studies at York University
Here are some of my recent publications on the role of data-driven methods, technology use, and technical expertise in the labor movement:
Vera Khovanskaya. The Cyberunion 20 Years Later. Interactions 30 (2), 48-51.
Udayan Tandon, Vera Khovanskaya, Enrique Arcilla, Mikaiil H Hussein, Peter Zschiesche, Lilly Irani. Hostile Ecologies: Navigating the Barriers to Community-Led Innovation. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 6 Issue CSCW2.
Khovanskaya, Vera, Phoebe Sengers, and Lynn Dombrowski. Bottom-Up Organizing with Tools from On High: Understanding the Data Practices of Labor Organizers. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020.
Khovanskaya, Vera, Lynn Dombrowski, Jeffrey Rzeszotarski, and Phoebe Sengers The Tools of Management: Adapting Historical Union Tactics to Platform-Mediated Labor. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3.CSCW (2019): 1-22.
Khovanskaya, Vera, and Phoebe Sengers. Data Rhetoric and Uneasy Alliances: Data Advocacy in US Labor History. Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 2019.
I am not currently teaching courses. In graduate school, I was instructor (solo and co-instructor) and TA for INFO/STS 4240: Designing Technologies for Social Impact. In summer 2018, I co-organized a summer school on technology and social impact. In summer 2017, I taught INFO1100, an introductory programming course for non-majors in Processing.
Please email me at v.khovanskaya at utoronto dot ca. Please do not email me at my prior UCSD email address. I am in the process of updating my website with pre-prints of all of my work. Until then, please email me for a .pdf of anything that has my name on it. I also exist more substantially on Twitter.
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.