Burcu Baykurt

My research examines how digital infrastructures reshape and perpetuate durable inequalities. I am currently writing a book, Smart as a City, based on fieldwork and interviews I conducted over three years in Kansas City, where residents and public officials have partnered with Google and Cisco to test a gigabit internet service and a smart city program, respectively. The book, under contract with the University of California Press, examines in what ways digital infrastructures change how the city manages and experiences urban inequalities.

I also study technologies of statecraft in various contexts from "tech nationalism" in the U.S. to predictable borders at the UNHCR to automated decision systems in municipal agencies. My work has been published in Big Data & Society, Convergence, New Media & Society, and the Journal of Political Power. I am the co-editor (with Victoria de Grazia) of Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st Century Global Order (Columbia University Press, 2021).

Ph.D. Columbia University

Undergraduate: Sidewalks and Screens; Social Life of Algorithms

Graduate: Media Theories; Ethnography of the Digital

Please visit http://baykurt.org for an updated list of publications.