معرفی
Rena Bivens is Associate Professor of Communication at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication (on sabbatical until 1 January 2026). A sociologist turned media scholar, she interrogates how gender, sexuality and race are engineered into social-media algorithms, apps and television-news infrastructures, drawing on feminist, queer, critical-race and decolonial theory as well as science & technology studies.
Education & Career:
- PhD Sociology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow Media Group
- MA Sociology, University of Western Ontario
- Lecturer in Digital Media & Mass Communication, University of Nottingham Ningbo China
- SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s & Gender Studies, Carleton
- Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Journalism & Communication, Carleton
Research Interests:
Rena’s work traces the silent embedding of normative design choices inside media technologies—whether dating-app drop-downs, anti-rape mobile tools, or Facebook’s gender settings—revealing how code, databases and servers distribute power along identity lines. She blends software studies, speculative design and science fiction to imagine more just technological futures.
Publication Trends:
Across 30+ outputs (2004-2021) she repeatedly returns to three arenas: (1) platform design politics—how interfaces bake in gender/sexuality categories; (2) algorithmic amplification and data segregation; and (3) feminist critiques of “technical fixes” for sexual violence. Her sole-author monograph Digital Currents (2014) charts how publics and technologies co-produce television news.
Contact: Rena.Bivens@carleton.ca | +1 613-520-2600 ext. 2041 | Richcraft Hall 4316
