Women and Gender Studies Lecture Series: Performing Development
Ames researches how the ideologies of computing cultures lead to specific design choices, policies, usage patterns and other cultural and material articulations. Her projects investigate the role and limitations of technological utopianism in education and development projects. Based on eight years of archival and ethnographic research, she is writing a book on One Laptop per Child, which explores the motivations behind the project and the cultural politics of a model site in Paraguay. Her next project explores the founding narratives of computer scientists and the social meanings of technology reforms in education, focusing on a one-to-one laptop program and a maker space in the Iron Triangle neighborhood of Richmond.
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Photo by Nikki Richter