Laura Forlano

Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a writer, social scientist and design researcher. Currently, Forlano is Professor in the department of Art + Design at the College of Arts, Media, and Design (CAMD) at Northeastern University.

From 2011-2022, she was an Associate Professor of Design at the Institute of Design and Affiliated Faculty in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she was Director of the Critical Futures Lab. In 2018-2019, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech in New York City and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Her research is focused on the aesthetics and politics of socio-technical systems and infrastructures at the intersection between emerging technologies, material practices and the future of cities; specifically, she writes about emergent forms of work, organizing and urbanism. Forlano’s research and writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Business Anthropology, Demonstrations, Catalyst, She Ji, Design Issues, the Journal of Peer Production, Fibreculture, Digital Culture & Society, ADA, Journal of Urban Technology, First Monday, The Information Society, Journal of Community Informatics, IEEE Pervasive Computing and Science and Public Policy. She is co-editor with Marcus Foth, Christine Satchell and Martin Gibbs of From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT Press 2011). She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.