Stephanie Dick

Stephanie Dick is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (SFU), where she also serves as a co-investigator on the Data Fluencies Grant at the Digital Democracies Institute. Previously, she held an Assistant Professor position in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and was a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows. She co-edits the “Mining the Past” column at the Harvard Data Science Review, sits on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and is a member of the Scholarly Council at UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. Additionally, she contributed to the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Histories of AI: A Genealogy of Power” and is a Teaching Advisory Board member for the Freedom Summer Collegiate Program in Mississippi.

Education:

• PhD (2015), History of Science, Harvard University
• MA (2008), History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto
• BA (2007), History of Science and Technology and Philosophy (First Class Combined Honors), the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University

Her research interests include the history of computing, artificial intelligence, and policing technologies, with a focus on postwar U.S. and Canada. Key projects involve Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society (co-edited with Janet Abbate, 2022), Making Up Minds (exploring automated theorem-proving and its political implications), and the “Ritual and Algorithm” initiative examining intersections between mathematical, psychological, and occult theories of the mind. She critiques the epistemic hegemony of rationality by investigating historical debates about objectivity, experimentation, and the entanglement of technology with existential and societal challenges like mass incarceration and misinformation.

Collaborative work and grants are central to her career. She co-created the Beyond Knowledge Tarot deck, a project with 20 scholars mapping ways of knowing onto tarot suits to foster pluralistic perspectives. She is actively applying for a SSHRC grant to explore AI-driven horoscopes, social media spirituality, and debates on natural selection as algorithmic processes. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes student agency, encouraging them to engage creatively with course material through hands-on activities and critical thinking exercises.

Labs/Teams: Stephanie collaborates with the Digital Democracies Institute, Wendy Chun’s “Experimental Algorithmic Futures” project, and the Ritual and Algorithm initiative. She co-organized the SIGCIS conference, transforming it into an inclusive community for historians of computing, and is part of the Freedom Summer Collegiate Program’s advisory board.