Jennifer Gabrys is Chair in Media, Culture and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She was previously Professor in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She led the Citizen Sense and AirKit projects, which received funding through an ERC Starting Grant (2013-2018) and ERC Proof of Concept Grant (2019-2020).
Her research investigates the intersection of social practices, environments and communication technologies through theoretical and practice-based work. Projects within this area include, Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (University of Michigan Press, 2011); Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet (University of Minnesota Press, 2016); How to Do Things with Sensors (University of Minnesota Press Forerunners series, 2019); and Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle.
Gabrys has been a Co-Investigator on the RCUK Energy Programme and ESRC-funded project, “Sustainability Invention and Energy Demand Reduction: Co-designing Communities and Practice.” This study, which was a collaboration with Mike Michael, Bill Gaver and the Interaction Research Studio, investigated how new technologies might be designed to engage communities in reducing energy consumption.
Selected Publications
(for a full list of Citizen Sense publications, see Publications)
- Gabrys, Jennifer. Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022. Open-access version available on Manifold.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. “Particle Stories: Breathing in the Long 2020.” In The Long 2020. Edited by Richard Grusin and Maureen Ryan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022.
- Mahajan, Sachit, Jennifer Gabrys, and Joanne Armitage. “AirKit: A Citizen-Sensing Toolkit for Monitoring Air Quality.” In the special issue, Air Quality Internet of Things Devices. Sensors 21, no. 12 (2021): 4044. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21124044.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. “Sensing Particulate Matter and Practicing Environmental Justice.” In Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Edited by TJ Demos, Emily Scott, and Subhankar Banerjee, 219-229. New York: Routledge, 2021.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. “Planetary Health in Practice: Sensing Air Pollution and Transforming Urban Environments.” In the research article collection, Healthy Publics: Transforming and Sustaining Health Research and Action. Edited by Steve Hinchliffe, Lenore Manderson, and Martin Moore. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7, no. 35 (2020): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00534-7.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. How to Do Things with Sensors. Forerunners: Ideas First. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. Available open access at Manifold.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. “Programming Environments: Environmentality and Citizen Sensing in the Smart City.” In the special issue, “A New Apparatus: Technology, Government, and the Resilient City,” edited by Bruce Braun and Stephanie Wakefield. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32, no. 1 (2014), 30-48; DOI: 10.1068/d16812.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. “Becoming Urban: Sitework from a Moss-Eye View.” Environment and Planning A 44, issue 12 (2012): 2922-2939; DOI: 10.1068/a44671.
- Gabrys, Jennifer. “Sensing an Experimental Forest: Processing Environments and Distributing Relations.” Computational Culture, issue 2 (2012), http://computationalculture.net/article/sensing-an-experimental-forest-processing-environments-and-distributing-relations.
