Hi, I'm Jiwon!

I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I am also a Research Assistant at the Community Data Clinic, led by Dr. Anita Say Chan, where I work on a community-driven digital equity project. My research draws on transnational and feminist STS and critical data and AI studies to examine how power operates across the design, deployment, and governance of sociotechnical systems. I am particularly interested in how gender, infrastructure, and technological imaginaries shape both the development of global AI economies and the visions of futurity these technologies are imagined to serve, as well as the community-based and grassroots practices that emerge in resistance. 

My dissertation traces a history of the South Korean tech economy to explore how technomasculine imaginares are encoded into contemporary relational AI systems as sites where automated intimacy and new forms of digitally mediated harm converge. Bringing a critical, feminist, and transnational perspective to questions of tech design and governance, I engage with dominant responsible AI frameworks and foreground how marginalized communities contest harm and generate alternative, care-based approaches to data and technology.

Outside of research, I can usually be found at the local cinema or sweating through a hot yoga class. I also love any excuse to be frolicking outdoors -- on picnics, hikes, beaches! 🧘‍♀️🧺☀️ I was born and raised in Seoul and have since called New Jersey, Manhattan, and Orlando home, which means I have strong opinions about bagels and theme parks.