Biography

Kirsten Foot, Professor of Communication and adjunct faculty in the Information School, is interested in several aspects of the relationship between information and communication technologies, organizing processes, and society. Prior to joining the faculty at the U. of Washington, she held a postdoctoral research appointment at the U. of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and a Fulbright fellowship at the U. of Helsinki’s Center for Research on Activity, Development, and Learning. She has researched the production of electoral web spheres in the U.S. and around the world, the development of a conflict monitoring network in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and online networks in the fair trade movements in the U.S. and the UK. In her current research, she brings her expertise on organizing processes and digital technologies to bear in studying worldwide efforts to combat human trafficking, and multi-sector collaboration in the anti-human trafficking movement in the U.S. She is also interested in cultural-historical activity theory and other practice-based theories of technology, and in this vein she co-edits the Acting With Technology Series at the MIT Press.

Dr. Foot is the lead author of the award-winning book Web Campaigning (MIT Press, 2006), and coeditor of The Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning (Routledge, 2007), and Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Media, and Society (MIT Press, 2014). An overview and the intro chapter for Media Technologies can be found here. Her work has been published in a wide array of journals within the field of communication and beyond. She teaches courses on topics such as theories of technology and society, ICTs and politics, digital media concepts, internet research methods, and human trafficking.

Dr. Foot’s most recent book, Collaborating Against Human Trafficking: Cross-Sector Challenges and Practices (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), suggests constructive paths through common tensions between organizations– to build more robust and sustainable collaborative efforts.