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Sherry Turkle

Room
E51-296C
Phone
617-253-4068
Email
sturkle@mit.edu
website
http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/

Professor Turkle received her B.A. from Radcliffe College (Social Studies, 1970) and her Ph.D. from Harvard University (Sociology and Personality Psychology, 1976). Professor Turkle's research examines the sociology of science, especially the sciences of the mind, and the subjective side of people's relationships with technology as they impact on questions of identity and definitions of self. Her current research examines the psychological impact of computational objects as they become increasingly "relational" artifacts.

In January 2001, Professor Turkle founded the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. The Initiative studies the multiple channels by which contemporary technologies become enmeshed in the formation of human identity. The Initiative's flagship working groups include Robots and Human Identity; Adolescence, Technology, and Identity; Psychopharmacology and Identity ("Rx/ID"); and Design, Space, and Software ("Architecture"). Groups in formation include: Information Technology and Identity ("Virtuality and Its Discontents); Nanotechnology and Identity; The Experience of the Archive: Physical and Digital; Gender, Technology, and Identity; and Psychodynamic Perspectives on Technology and Self.

Professor Turkle has received fellowships from the Aspen Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation and grants from the IBM Corporation, National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Mitchell Kapor Foundation. She is a graduate and affiliate member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and a licensed clinical psychologist. Her writings include Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution (2nd ed. 1992), The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (2nd ed. forthcoming), and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995).

Activities:


Initiative on Technology and Self

Sherry Turkle is founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, sponsored by the Kapor Foundation, and continues her NSF-funded work on Relational Artifacts, centering on robotics and artificial creatures.

NSF Grant

Professors Turkle (PI), Dumit, Gusterson, Mindell, and Susan Silbey (Anthropology) received a grant from the NSF to investigate the effects of new information technologies on professional identities and the conduct of scientific and professional work. They will host a conference in September 2003 to explore areas where there has been a rethinking of the nature of the disciplines as a result of the introduction of visualization and simulation.