Sanna Ali

Sanna is a PhD Candidate in Communication. She studies the ways in which the production of digital technologies contributes to racial, social, and economic inequality. In Silicon Valley, technology is often invoked in order to imagine utopian visions of work. Uber encourages drivers to “be your own boss,” and people envision automation as a path to a workless future. And yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has made inequality between essential workers (including gig workers working via on-demand apps) and knowledge workers (who can work remotely from home) more salient than ever. Through several cases and a combination of mapping and ethnographic techniques, her dissertation sheds light on the ways in which labor and inequality is shaped by cultural and technological infrastructures. One of Sanna's cases examines digital redlining, or the practices of telecommunications companies of discriminating against low-income residents in their deployment of fiber infrastructure. Such practices in the present day align with the history and geography of financial redlining and segregation. Inequality in infrastructure perpetuates cycles of poverty, as quality broadband access is increasingly essential to work and education in a post-COVID-19 world.

Sanna has 3 years of teaching experience at Stanford, including a course she designed called "Introduction to Digital Labor." She completed her M.S. in Information & Computer Science from UCI in the Department of Informatics and her B.S. with Honors in Science, Technology, & Society from Stanford, where she received the Firestone Medal for her undergraduate thesis. Much of Sanna's interest in technology and labor is informed by her experience working in the tech industry through UX Research internships at Facebook and Amazon and as a Community Specialist at Pinterest. Sanna interned at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a technology policy advocacy non-profit in Washington DC as a Google Policy Fellow. She is also involved with graduate student advocacy and is serving as the co-chair of the Graduate Student Council. She hopes to continue her community advocacy, involvement, and impact through her research and after graduation.