This page contains an archive of the past five years of Directed Research Groups led by Professor Ribes. View his currently offered DRGs »
- Tech Policy Wonk: What is Research Security?
- Out of the Archives
- Into the Archives
- Investigating Healthcare/Research Infrastructure: Reading Group
Winter 2025
Tech Policy Wonk: What is Research Security?
Technology policy refers to the set of guidelines, principles, and legislation that governments develop to regulate technology (whether new or old, such as AI, but also old ones, such as the chemicals in hairspray).
This Directed Research Group (DRG) will focus on tracing technology policy: Where does it come from and what are its influences? Our key goal will be to design visualizations that help to make sense of policy. In the lingo of Washington DC, we are 'policy wonks'.
Our focus this year will be how US federal policy regulates technology, research and intellectual property that bear some relationship to national security (such as AI, quantum computing, CRISPR and Nuclear), or what has recently been called Research Security. What led to the creation of these policies and what has come from them?
This DRG will have a handful of required assigned readings to help us understand 'what is policy', but it is primarily about design, and public communication. We will research and then create accessible visualizations that help everyday people (and other wonks) to understand the arcane worlds of policy.
In your application, please describe your past experience doing research and design, and let us know if you have experience with policy, law, and other forms of technology governance. Students need not have experience with policy; we will learn about it together, and we will provide many handholds and starting points for the research.
Spring 2024
Led by PhD students Os Keyes and Kyra Arnett with guidance from Associate Professor David Ribes
Building on last quarter's "Into the Archives", we are looking for graduate or undergraduate students interested in integrating historical methods and materials into HCI and STS research. A particular focus focus this quarter will be what to do when materials come "outside" the archives: how to process them, consume them, and use them in writing and research.
Winter 2024
Led by David Ribes, HCDE associate professor, and Os Keyes, HCDE PhD candidate
Considering the history of systems is an increasingly-important part of research in design and engineering - but it's hard to find opportunities to learn how to do that. This DRG aims to provide just that. Working with and in the University of Washington archives, participants will:
- Explore archival and historic materials relating to a topic they care about, and;
- Come together weekly to discuss and reflect upon what they have learned about that topic, and about the work of researching in archival ways.
We are looking for 4-8 students, from any program in the broad sphere of HCDE, and expect the DRG to take at most four hours of your time a week.
Spring 2022
Investigating Healthcare/Research Infrastructure: Reading Group
Co-Directed by HCDE Prof. David Ribes and PhD student Meg Moldestad
In this reading group we will explore how to investigate infrastructure in the context of healthcare and biomedical research. We plan to cover a breadth of topics, including (but not limited to) medical service provision, biomedical research, health data and analytics, vaccine/drug production and distribution, public health, and healthcare facility built environments. Readings and discussions will have a particular focus on inequities built into these systems and what design contributions we might make to improve them.
This is a reading and discussion seminar. Core readings will be assigned each week and students will come prepared to discuss. With support from the co-directors, participants will lead one discussion during the quarter and provide supplemental readings as desired. We will also create a final product that we collectively decide on and design (one example: annotated bibliography).
Recommended Background
This DRG is most suitable for students with an interest in the infrastructure of both healthcare and biomedical research. BS, MS, and PhD students are all welcome, but we are limiting participation to ~10 students. If you wish to participate in the reading group, please send an email to dribes@uw.edu and momo63@uw.edu with a few sentences explaining your research interests, why you are interested in the group, and what you hope to get from the experience.