Profile

Professor Gina Neff is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. She studies the future of work in data-rich environments. Professor Neff leads a new multinational comparative research project on the effects of the adoption of AI across multiple industries. She is the author of Venture Labor (MIT Press, 2012), which won the 2013 American Sociological Association Communication and Information Technologies Best Book Award; and with Dawn Nafus Self-Tracking (MIT Press, 2016). Her writing for the general public has appeared in Wired, Slate and The Atlantic, among other outlets. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University, where she remains a faculty affiliate at the Center on Organizational Innovation, and she serves as a strategic advisor on the social impact of AI for the Women’s Forum.

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 –

Research

Current projects

  • The Futures for Online Consumption

    Participants: Professor Gina Neff, Blake DiCosola

    How might the future of consumption change how we track and monitor ourselves? This project will test different strategies for helping people make healthier choices in online food shopping.

  • The A-Z of AI

    Participants: Professor Gina Neff, James Ward IV, Margaret McGrath, Blake Dicosola, Nayana Prakash

    The A-Z of AI is an interactive guide that allows anyone who is curious about AI to develop a baseline understanding of the technology.

  • AI & Data Diversity

    Participants: Professor Gina Neff

    This project seeks to advance public understanding of data diversity and the everyday decisions around AI and technology innovation. This will help build better technologies and strengthen the science on diversity in technology-led growth.

  • Data Work: Collaboration, Sense Making and the Possible Futures for Work

    Participants: Professor Gina Neff

    How do new types of data change workplace practices?

Past projects

  • Reconfiguring Citizen Participation in Cybersecurity

    Participants: Julia Slupska, Professor Gina Neff

    Reconfigure is a feminist cybersecurity project that uses community-based participatory methods and feminist approaches to reconfigure cybersecurity research and build public capacity for data privacy and action.

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. (2019) "The Political Economy of Digital Health" In: Society and the Internet How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives GRAHAM, M. and Dutton, W.H. (eds.). Oxford University Press. 281-292.
  • NEFF, G. and Nagy, P. (2018) "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. (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. (2012) "Conclusion: Lessons from a New Economy for a New Medium?" In: Venture Labor. The MIT Press. 149-166.
  • Neff, G. (2012) "The Crash of Venture Labor" In: Venture Labor. The MIT Press. 133-148.
  • Neff, G. (2012) "Why Networks Failed" In: Venture Labor. The MIT Press. 101-132.
  • Neff, G. (2012) "Being Venture Labor: Strategies for Managing Risk" In: Venture Labor. The MIT Press. 69-100.
  • Neff, G. (2012) "The Origins and Rise of Venture Labor" In: Venture Labor. The MIT Press. 39-68.
  • Neff, G. (2012) "The Social Risks of the Dot-Com Era" In: Venture Labor. The MIT Press. 1-38.
  • 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. 173-188.
  • 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

Journal articles

Teaching

  • 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.

Videos

  • Professor Gina Neff presents ‘The A to Z of AI’

    Recorded: 23 March 2020

    Duration: 00:03:34

    Leading sociologist, Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor Gina Neff, Oxford Internet Institute, presents her guide to artificial intelligence, in association with Google

  • 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?'

Events

Blog

Press

Integrity Statement

In the past five years work my work and the work of my students has been financially supported by UK taxpayers, UK Economic and Social Research Council, UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, British Academy, US National Science Foundation, University of Washington, Leverhulme Trust, Google and Microsoft. As part of my science communication and policy outreach, I have served in an advisory capacity with paid talks, paid training or unpaid service on an advisory board or working group with the following organizations: AI Now, Configuring Light Project at LSE, Data & Society Research Institute, Deloitte UK, DigiMed, GMG Ventures, IAC, ING Bank, Minderoo Foundation, Northern Illinois University, Understanding Public Uses of Data and Dashboards Project at UC Irvine, Saïd School of Business Executive Education, Structure Tone, University of Calgary Gairdner Lecture, VIRT-EU H2020 Project, The Women’s Forum for Economy & Society, Zinc VC.