Silvia Lindtner

Silvia Margot Lindtner (she/her) is a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information and director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC). She has conducted almost two decades of fieldwork in China, advancing the social and cultural study of technology. She is the author of the award-winning book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020), and co-author of the multigraph Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths/MIT Press 2020). Lindtner has been a visiting professor at NYU Shanghai (2021-2024), a visiting scholar with the Paul Tsai China Center at the Yale Law School (2024-25), a CUSP (China-US Scholars Program) fellow (2021-22), and a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program (2021-23). 

Lindtner’s research has been awarded support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), IIE (the Institute of International Education), IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services), Intel Labs, and Google Anita Borg. Her work has appeared at ST&HV (Science, Technology, and Human Values), ESTS (Engaging Science, Technology and Society), SocialText, Women’s Studies Quarterly, China Information, ToCHI, ACM SIGCHI (Human-Computer Interaction), ACM CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing), among other venues. In 2020, she was named a Distinguished Member by the ACM, a recognition of “outstanding contributions to the field of computing.” Her book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020) was awarded the Levenson Prize for China Scholarship post-1900 by the Association for Asian Studies and the Francis L.K. Hsu Prize by the Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA).

Pronouns

she/her

Areas of interest

Science and Technology Studies (STS), Cultural and Feminist Anthropology, China Studies, Global China, HCI (human computer interaction), Critical Computing, Global Communication and Media Studies, Technology Policy, AI Justice

Honors & Awards

Joseph Levenson Prize for China Scholarship post 1900 by the association for Asian Studies (for Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation) 

FRANCIS L.K. HSU BOOK PRIZE, awarded by the Society for East Asian Anthropology (for Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation) 

Distinguished Member, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) 

PIP (Public Intellectual Program) Fellowship, 2021-23 

CUSP (China-US Scholars Program) Fellowship, 2021-22

Education

PhD, Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine 
BS/MS of Applied Science, Media Technology and Design, University of Hagenberg, Austria