I am a scholar specializing in Latine information and technology histories and practices in the U.S., critical information science, and the social construction of technologies. I will join the faculty at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies in fall 2024.
📞 🖥️ I'm currently working on research for my next project, Let in the Light: Mexican Women’s Socio-Techno Stories 📱
My book Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry around Immigrant Data (University of California Press) is out now! Listen to the Big Data and Society interview about the book to learn more.
Latinas on the Line (Rutgers Press, 2022) received honorable mention from the Labor Tech Research Network's Inaugural book award for 2022. Watch me speak about Latinas on the Line at the Computer History Museum.
Where to next?
May: ALIGNED 2024, Culver City, Center on Race & Digital Justice
July/August: Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute
October 2024: Brown University
Select Publications
Sweeney, M. and Villa-Nicholas, M. Digitizing the ‘Ideal’ Latina Information Worker. (2022). American Quarterly.
Villa-Nicholas, M. and Sweeney, M. (March 2020) "Designing the ‘good citizen’ through Latina identity in USCIS’s virtual assistant ‘Emma.’" Feminist Media Studies.
Watch our lecture at Harvard Kennedy School
Data Body Milieu: The Latinx Immigrant at the Center of Technological Design. (2019). Feminist Media Studies.
Watch my lecture on the topic at Northwestern’s Center for Latinx Digital Media
Austin, J. and Villa-Nicholas, M. (August 2019) “Information Provision and the Carceral State: Race and Reference Beyond the Idea of the ‘Underserved.’” The Reference Librarian. 60.4
Watch our lecture Reimagining the Public: Library Services to People in Jails and Prisons with the American Library Association
Education
PhD Information Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2016
MA Library and Information Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
2012
MA Cultural Studies
Claremont Graduate University
2010
