As a user researcher with a background in computer science and anthropology, I have a passion for using surveys, diaries, interviews and fieldwork to uncover valuable insights. I currently work with a remote team of designers, developers and product managers on civic-minded projects.
In addition to this work, I lead a business that connects NYC families through joyful, hands-on music and movement experiences.
My academic research has focused on digital media, media ethnography, methods in media analysis, copyright, information rights, transnational cultures, France, and Europe. I have conducted both primary and secondary research in these areas and have drawn on anthropology to engage with media studies, feminist technoscience studies, law studies, and European studies.
My Ph.D. dissertation, completed in 2008, explored the experiences of French free software advocates as they reinvented civic engagement around digital media. I analyzed how intellectual property law and software, often seen as vehicles of free-market globalization, have instead served to invigorate public debates about European integration and the transnational political economy. My research included twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in France and the European Union in 2004 and 2005. My work demonstrates the diverse and often contentious ways that people use digital technologies, highlighting the importance of culture and history in understanding global digital infrastructures.
I have published an article, “Contentious Europeanization: The Paradox of Becoming European through Anti-Patent Activism” in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (2010) and a chapter “Free Software and the Politics of Sharing” in Digital Anthropology (2012).
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jelena@karanovic.org. Thank you!