chinese-canadian woman with pink hair in braids and an icelandic wool hat smiling at the camera with a larch tree and rocks in the background

hi! i'm joice.

I'm a fourth year PhD student in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, where I am affiliated with Inquilab. I'm advised by Dr. Sucheta Ghoshal and Dr. Jennifer Turns.

Like many others at this time, I spend a lot of time thinking about how workers (and labor, more broadly) are affected by AI and automation. My research centers critical sociotechnical perspectives to explore how workers can organize for more autonomy over technology in their workplaces, while simultaneously considering how community-based participatory design methods may potentially be helpful to the cause. Bringing together my work and my organizing with UAW Local 4121 (the union of academic workers at the UW), my current research focuses on how artificial intelligence will—and already does—redefine the work of precaritized academic workers in higher education.

I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, where I graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia. I also hold an M.Sc. in HCDE from UW. If I seem familiar, chances are that we've met before—I have historically changed my hair often, though the above picture is up to date!