Bio
Nicole West Bassoff is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia. She studies the politics of digital transformations at urban scales.
West Bassoff is trained in the field of science, technology, and society (STS) and holds a PhD in public policy (Harvard University), an MPhil in history and philosophy of science (University of Cambridge) and an A.B. in history and science (Harvard University). Her work sits at the intersection of STS, urbanism and public policy. She takes a comparative approach to the study of technology policy with a focus on the role of cities and urban politics in the democratic governance of digitization. Her doctoral dissertation examined public controversies surrounding smart city projects in the United States and she is currently developing a cross-national comparative project about the local political frictions produced by the construction of data centers and other resource-intensive infrastructures of the global data economy.
