Cella Sum is a postdoctoral research fellow at UVA’s Digital Technology for Democracy Lab. Her research focuses on technology, power, and resistance in labor and community contexts.
Working at the intersection of HCI and STS, she uses qualitative and ethnographic methods to investigate how communities experience, navigate, and contest exploitative sociotechnical structures, such as data-driven systems, surveillance technologies, and AI infrastructure development. Using participatory and speculative design methods, she collaborates with affected communities to co-create more just alternatives. Her work has been published at CSCW, CHI, and Science as Culture.
At the DTD Lab, she will focus on co-designing community-driven policy interventions for data center and AI infrastructure development. Working with local residents, policymakers, technology and energy experts, unions, and community-based organizations, she will co-develop a publicly accessible community-driven policy toolkit centered on sustainability, transparency, equity, accountability, and community needs.
Cella holds a PhD in human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University and a master’s degree in human-computer interaction and design from UC Irvine. She is a member of Collective Action in Tech and a former tech worker-organizer with Big Cartel Workers Union.
