Qunfang Wu, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Inequality in America Initiative at Harvard University, will deliver “Designing for Social Equity in Socio-Technical Systems” as part of CSRAI's Young Achievers Symposium.
About the Talk
In this talk, Qunfang Wu will present her research on understanding, critiquing, and designing equitable technologies. Drawing on critical theories such as new racism, intersectionality, and feminism, her work explores how socio-technical systems can create and perpetuate inequalities, with a focus on two key contexts: the perpetuation of racist discourses and governance practices in online communities, and algorithmic harms in personalized recommendation systems. Across these contexts, her research documents diverse forms of resistance—illustrating how communities challenge systemic inequities—at both individual and institutional levels. By analyzing these resistance actions, her work contributes empirical and theoretical knowledge on adapting resistance strategies across varied contexts. Finally, Wu will demonstrate how these insights inform her efforts to design equitable systems that empower underrepresented and marginalized communities.
About the Speaker
Qunfang Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Inequality in America Initiative at Harvard University and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She received her Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University in 2023. Previously, she earned her B.S. in Information Management and System and an M.S. in Information Science from Peking University in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Wu's research spans the areas of HCI, social justice, and human-centered AI. Her work challenges how socio-technical systems are designed to enable and propagate inequalities and advocates for design justice perspectives to reshape these systems. Her research has been published in ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), and ACM Transactions on Social Computing (TSC).
About the Young Achievers Symposium
The Young Achievers Symposium highlights early career researchers in diverse fields of AI for social impact. The symposium series seeks to focus on emerging research, stimulate discussions, and initiate collaborations that can advance research in artificial intelligence for societal benefit. All events in the series are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted. Penn State students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty with an interest in socially responsible AI applications are encouraged to attend.