Professor Gina Neff

Professor Neff is a sociologist who studies innovation, the digital transformation of industries, and how new technologies impact work. She has studied digital change in the media, health care, and construction industries.

Email: gina.neff@oii.ox.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)1865 612778

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Professor Gina Neff is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. She studies innovation, the digital transformation of industries, and how new technologies impact work.

She has published three books and over three dozen research articles on innovation and the impact of digital transformation. Her book Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries (MIT Press, 2012) about the rise of internet industries in New York City, won the 2013 American Sociological Association Communication and Information Technologies Best Book Award. Her book, Self-Tracking, co-authored with Dawn Nafus (MIT Press, 2016) focuses on the practices and politics of using consumer technologies to track health and other everyday personal metrics. Her ongoing project on large-scale building architecture and construction examines how new information and communication technologies require new ways of working and the challenges of implementing these changes at an industrial scale.

She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University where she remains a faculty affiliate of the Center on Organizational Innovation. Professor Neff has held faculty appointments at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego. She has had fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study and the Center for Information Technology Policy. Her popular writing has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, and Slate.

Areas of Interest for Doctoral Supervision

Big data, cultural industries, innovation, labour, social media, organisation

Research interests

innovation, work, organisations, culture, communication, theory, qualitative methods, critical data studies, science and technology studies.

Position held at the OII

  • Director of DPhil programme, January 2017 –
  • Senior Research Fellow, July 2016 –
  • Associate Professor, July 2016 –

Latest blog posts

Current projects

Books

  • Neff, G. and Nafus, D. (2016) Self-Tracking. MIT Press.
  • Amman, J., Carpenter, T. and Neff, G. (2015) Surviving the New Economy. Routledge.
  • Neff, G. (2012) Venture Labor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chapters

  • NEFF, G. (2018) "The Potential of Networked Solidarity: Communication at the End of the Long Twentieth Century" In: Trump and the Media Boczkowski, P.J. and Papacharissi, Z. (eds.). MIT Press.
  • Fiore-Gartland,, B. and Neff, G. (2016) "Disruption and the Political Economy of Biosensor Data" In: Quantified: Biosensing Technologies in Everyday Life Nafus, D. (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 101-122.
  • Neff, G. and Stark, D. (2004) "Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era" In: Society Online The Internet in Context Howard, P.N. and Jones, S. (eds.). SAGE.
  • NEFF, G. and Nagy, P. "Agency in the digital age: Using symbiotic agency to explain human-technology interaction" In: A Networked Self: Human Augmentics, Artificial Intelligence, Sentience Papacharissi, Z. (eds.). Routledge.
  • NEFF, G. "The Potential of Networked Solidarity: Communication at the End of the Long Twentieth Century" In: Trump and the Media Boczkowski, P.J. and Papacharissi, Z. (eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Conference papers

  • Kuksenok, K., Aragon, C., Fogerty, J., Lee, C.P. and NEFF, G. (2017) "Deliberate Individual Change Framework for Understanding Programming Practices in Four Oceanography Groups", Computer Supported Cooperative Work: the journal of collaborative computing. Springer Verlag (Germany). 26 (4-6) 663-691.
  • Dossick, C.S., NEFF, G., Osburn, L., Monson, C. and Burpee, H. (2016) "Technical Boundary Spanners and Translation:A Study of Energy Modeling for High Performance Hospitals", Engineering Project Organization Conference.
  • Monson, C., NEFF, G., Dossick, C., Osburn, L. and Burpee, H. (2016) "Finding Connections Between Design Processes and Institutional Forces on Integrated AEC Teams for High Performing Energy Design", Engineering Project Organization Conference. Taylor & Francis: STM, Behavioural Science and Public Health Titles.

Journal articles

  • Social Dynamics of the Internet

    An overview of the major findings to date regarding the social implications of the Internet, drawing material from several social science disciplines, including communication studies, sociology, and political science.

  • Does AI Have Gender?

    Recorded: 25 June 2018

    Duration: 00:36:53

    The spring 2018 Oxford Internet Institute London Lecture, with speaker Professor Gina Neff on the subject of 'Does AI Have Gender?'

  • Could Google Maps plot safer routes?

    26 September 2018 Financial Times


    The app’s vast access to data could help late-night walkers get home

  • For a Relaxing Vacation, Look to the Data

    5 August 2016 The Wall Street Journal


    To avoid the risk of your leisure time feeling like work when it is tracked, Gina Neff, co-author of “Self-Tracking,” suggests using “non-quantitative” tracking.