Hi, I'm Jiwon!

I am a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. My research draws on transnational & feminist STS, East Asian technocultures, and AI ethics to examine how historical legacies of colonialism, capitalism, and liberal humanism shape contemporary technological imaginaries and digital infrastructures across East Asia. I am particularly interested in the cultural and political life of AI, and how discourses of innovation, intimacy, and governance are entangled in the production of relational AI.

My current projects explore shifting notions of intimacy and relationality in the age of generative and conversational AI; the governance of gendered and algorithmic harm on digital platforms; and community-based data infrastructures that mobilize alternative care-based data practices as resistance to dominant logics of extraction. I am also a Research Assistant at the Community Data Clinic, where I work on a community-driven digital equity project. 

I hold an M.A. in Communication from Seoul National University, and a B.S. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. In my spare time, I like to travel, and geek out over K-pop and musical theatre. I also love spending time outdoors - on picnics, hikes, beaches! I was born and raised in Seoul, but have also spent a good chunk of my life in New Jersey, Manhattan, and Orlando.