Lucy Suchman


Lucy Suchman is a Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom. Her current research extends her longstanding critical engagement with the field of human-computer interaction to the domain of contemporary war fighting, including problems of ‘situational awareness’ in military training and simulation, and in the design and deployment of automated weapon systems. At the center of this research is the question of whose bodies are incorporated into military systems, how and with what consequences for social justice and the possibility for a less violent world. Suchman is a member of International Committee for Robot Arms Control and the author of the blog dedicated to the problems of ethical robotics and 'technocultures of humanlike machines' Before coming to Lancaster, she worked for 22 years at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, where she held the positions of Principal Scientist and Manager of the Work Practice and Technology research group. Suchman is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, obtaining her BA in 1972, MA in 1977, and Doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology in 1984. While at Berkeley, she wrote her dissertation on the work practices of accountants. She studied procedural office work to understand how it was similar to and different from a program, assumptions around the work, and how the work informed the design of these systems.

Research

Suchman's early research was heavily influenced by ethnomethodology, a subfield of sociology that argued that people create meaningful action by improvising based on their social and environmental resources. Suchman's book, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-machine Communication, provided intellectual foundations for the field of human-computer interaction. She challenged common assumptions behind the design of interactive systems with a cogent anthropological argument that human action is constantly constructed and reconstructed from dynamic interactions with the material and social worlds. The theory of situated cognition emphasises the importance of the environment as an integral part of the cognitive process.
She has made fundamental contributions to ethnographic analysis, conversational analysis and Participatory Design techniques for the development of interactive computer systems.
An updated version of the book was published in 2007. This second edition, called Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action, included five new chapters exploring developments in the field of computing and social studies technology since the mid-1980s. Specifically, Suchman addressed the relationship and interactions between humans and machines with a focus on the idea of human-like machines. Her later research is dedicated to problems of autonomy and control in human-technology interaction with emphasis on autonomous weapon systems.

Professional affiliations

In 1988, Suchman served as the Program Chair for the Second Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. She also served as the Program Chair for the first Conference on Participatory Design of Computer Systems. Between 1982 and 1990, Suchman was on the board of directors of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, a group she helped to form. Suchman is currently a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. In addition, she serves as a Collaborating Editor for Social Studies of Science.
Suchman is also affiliated with numerous academic institutions. She served as president of the Society for Social Studies of Science from 2016-2017. She has served as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow with King's College London's Work, Interaction and Technology Research Group and as an Adjunct Professor for the Interaction Design and Work Practice Laboratory at Sydney's University of Technology. Suchman currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Publications