About the Author

Christena Nippert-Eng, Ph.D. is a Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Her research interests include cognitive sociology, culture, everyday life, privacy, work, gender, the home, time and space, technology, ethnography, and the Western Lowland Gorillas of the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Dr. Nippert-Eng's work has been featured extensively in the media, including radio, television and newspaper interviews ranging from NPR's "Talk of the Nation" to programs on PBS and MSNBC and stories for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Working Mother and Fast Company. She has been an invited speaker for such diverse venues as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the Smithsonian Museum, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons' Pediatric Group, Reason Magazine's Dynamic Visions conferences, the MotherRead/FatherRead literacy organization, and the Industrial Design Society of America.

Christena teaches film, project, field- and lecture-based courses at IIT. She enjoys an on-going relationship with Simona Maschi's Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design in Denmark and the Instituto des Artes Visuais (IADE) in Lisbon, Portugal, where she serves on the Counselling Committee for the doctoral program and on the editorial board for The (Radical) Designist, Journal of Design Culture. She is also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Design, edited by Lin-Lin Chen at the Graduate Institute of Design, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.

Professor Nippert-Eng is the 2010-2011 national Chair of the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association. She also has held elected positions on the ASA Section Councils for the "Sociology of Culture" and "Work, Organization and Occupations." She is exceptionally proud to be a founding partner of the Chicago Graduate Student Ethnography Conference, now in its 14^th year.

Dr. Nippert-Eng lives with her family in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. She studies improvisational comedy, musical improv, and comedy writing at Second City and the Annoyance Theater.

Christena Nippert-Eng's Other Works

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