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Sociology Faculty

Xiaowei Wang
  • Pronouns they/them
  • Title
    • Visiting Assistant Professor
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Sociology Department
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Social Sciences 2, Room 47
  • Mail Stop Psychology Faculty Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High St.
    • Santa Cruz California 95064

Research Interests

I am a scholar, artist and advocate who studies the intersection of technology, culture and society through a geographical lens. Broadly, I look at the environmental impacts of technology and the way the tech industry is intertwined with racial capitalism. My first book Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside (FSG Originals) examines the narratives around Web3 and AI in agriculture and farming, racial imaginaries of the futuristic, Asiatic robot, and how narratives of technological development lead to material transformations and land disposession. My dissertation is combination of archival research and ethnographic interviews that look at ideologies of care in and outside of institutional settings, how historicially race and gender are used to construct citizens deemed capable or incapable of care, and how digital control becomes constructed as care. While at UCSC I look forward to connecting with others interested in questions of science, technology and environmental justice. 

Biography, Education and Training

PhD: Geography and Designated Emphasis in New Media, University of California, Berkeley (2023)

MA: Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2013)

AB: Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University (2008)

Honors, Awards and Grants

2023-2024: Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Los Angeles | Center on Race and Digital Justice

2024: Eyebeam Fellowship, Democracy Machine

2023: Mozilla Foundation, Green Screen Coalition grant

2023: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, YBCA 100

2023: National Book Foundation, Science and Literature Program award for Blockchain Chicken Farm

2021: University of Southern California, Annenberg Innovation Lab, Civic Media Fellowship

2019: Mozilla Creative Media Award

2017-2019: National Science Foundation, Environment and Society, Data Sciences for the 21st Century Graduate Fellowship

2017: Gan Aston Award, University of California, Berkeley Graduate Division

Teaching Interests

I am in interested in engaged pedagogy and how we can co-created educational spaces that practice a more just, liberatory world we want to live in. In terms of pedagogy, I am inspired by the work and writings of bell hooks, Paulo Freire and Arturo Escobar.