Dr. Alex Hanna is director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada.
Hanna has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Hanna serves as a senior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the Scholars Council for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. She is a recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany‘s Queer 50 and Go Magazine‘s Women We Love lists, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color. She holds a BS in computer science and mathematics and a BA in sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.