Hi, I’m Palashi!

I’m an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair for Technological Inclusion in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University. Prior to this, I was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego.

Working at the intersection of Information Science, Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Studies, I study how socio-technical and cultural practices of communities and institutions/organizations shape, and are shaped by, relationships of power and inequity in computing.

I think a lot about what is considered normative and what is normalized in worlds of computing, including where it comes from and how it becomes common sense. To this end, I am often pursuing alternative understandings of computing that challenge or resist such norms. I am guided by historical, material and corporeal knowledge of marginalized communities to question as well as re-imagine worlds of technology.

💡 Critical and Interpretive Studies of Technology

👩🏽‍💻 Human-Computer Interaction

🤳🏽 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

⚖️ Technology, Justice and Equity

You can contact me at pvaghela <at> sfu <dot> ca

(Picture of a person of South Asian heritage, medium dark brown hair and olive medium brown skin tone standing in a forest with a tote bag and a blue jacket in hand)