Danah Boyd at the Microsoft Research Center in Cambridge on Sept. 23, 2010.
Activist and scholar danah boyd is a widely respected technology researcher whose work focuses on social media — particularly with respect to youth culture — and the intersection between technology and society. A senior researcher at Microsoft Research and an assistant professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, boyd, (who spells her name in lower-case), is perhaps best known for research on how young people use the Internet to create new forms of community and identity.
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A prolific blogger and Tweeter, boyd is widely quoted in the press for her expertise on how young people use social media. She studied computer science at Brown University, and earned a PhD in 2008 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Information. She’s been a fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In 2009, the magazine Fast Company named boyd one of the most influential women in technology, and in 2010, she was named by Fortune magazine as a rising star under the age of 40.