About / Media and Speaking Inquiries

Contact information: I can be reached at zeynep at technosociology dot org.*

*Please* DO NOT email my university address with media/other requests. Use the email provided here. My university email is for students and other academic work. Thank you!

Please email me at zeynep at technosociology.org for speaking engagement inquires and kindly put “speaking inquiry” in the subject line.

Bio: I am an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill at at the School of Information and Library Science, a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. My first book, Twitter and Tear Gas, was published by Yale University Press. I also have an affiliate appointment in the Department of Sociology at UNC.

You can sign up for my newsletter here. I rarely publicly blog anymore, but I do send newsletters out. My newsletters are not otherwise publicly posted. I also have a Facebook page which I update with my writings. If you “like” the page, my writings may show up on your newsfeed (algorithm willing): https://www.facebook.com/technosociology Previously, I wrote regularly at The Message. Those can be found can be found here: https://medium.com/@zeynep

Past: I have been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University during which taught at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs. I was also previously a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University where I am now a faculty associate. I was previously an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Speaking engagements: Please email me at zeynep at technosociology.org for speaking engagement inquires with a subject line like “speaking inquiry”. While I obviously attend academic conferences and events (it’s my job!) and do my best to do a limited number of pro bono or reduced fee talks for local groups, student organizations or cash-strapped collectives working for positive social change, I am not going to talk at your (ticketed!) conference for free. It’s not just that I cannot, but  that I find that this is not a healthy model: many people talk for free to sell books or to get more speaking engagements, and both of these models constrain the depth of analysis that can be provided and the critical eye that is tolerated.

If you are looking for pictures of me to use for an event or an article, here are a few formal and informal recent ones (click on picture for full file).

Yes, that is a northern water snake. Yes, it was released without harm. (Zeynep Tufekci, Eno River, North Carolina, September, 2017)

Zeynep Tufekci speaks at TEDGlobal NYC, September 20, 2017, The Town Hall, NY, NY. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

Zeynep Tufekci speaks at TEDGlobal NYC, September 20, 2017, The Town Hall, NY, NY. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

Yes, I should have a more recent professional headshot. I’ll get around to it. Here’s one taken by UNC studios on March 2011, available at higher-res at this link:

 

Here is my 2017 TED talk on why the real acute threat from artificial intelligence is more how the powerful will use it against us, rather than autonomous AI going berserk on us by itself.

 
Here is my 2014 talk at TED about social movements and digital technology.

 
Here’s my 2016 TED talk on ethical quandaries of machine learning:

 

* Emails to my university email from journalists will often go unanswered. My academic email is provided for my students, colleagues or are for others with academic considerations to reach me. For media and other inquiries, please use the email provided here. Also: I get a significant amount of media inquiries, and I appreciate that many journalists seek out my views or comments. I am most likely to reply if you have a short, directed inquiry or a well-defined suggestion.

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