🎉 New essay reflecting on my experiences so far as an "independent researcher"—ill-defined though that term is.
Conversation
really liked this essay! my view of academic HCI basically agrees with yours. i get the impression that the problem is largely driven by funding sources (esp NSF grants + tech megacorps), which are heavily biased toward the incremental. in HCI they fund projects, not people
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i've gotten away with doing a lot of weird speculative work at UCSC, but i've largely been supported by fellowships, TAships, & dregs of funding from previous grants – i genuinely have no idea how to acquire long-term lab-scale funding for the kind of work i do right now
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That's really disappointing to hear. When I think about "what young academic HCI researchers are doing things which might bode well for the field's future?" you're one of the first names that comes to mind!
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ah thanks, that means a lot coming from you :) i've seen a few up-and-coming new PIs getting funding for speculative work under AI+HCI, CS education & PL labels recently, so it might be possible to reinvigorate HCI via adjacent fields – considering this as part of future strategy
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(as you can maybe imagine, i've been thinking about this a lot as i get closer to graduation + the academic job market)
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