Tawanna Dillahunt selected for MLK Visiting Professorship at MIT

University of Michigan School of Information associate professor Tawanna Dillahunt has received a 2023 Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professorship at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. 

The MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program fellows participate in community engagement and support MIT’s mission of “advancing knowledge and educating students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century." 

During her appointment, Dillahunt will host a podcast to explore ethical and socially responsible ways to engage with communities, with a special emphasis on technology. The Community Conversations Around Tech podcast will bring together diverse voices and perspectives within a community to engage in meaningful discussions about technology's impact on our lives. 

The podcast aims to promote inclusivity, educate and inform the public, and discuss the ethical and social implications of technology. 

“Ultimately, the podcast aims to empower individuals with the knowledge and insights needed to make informed decisions about technology in their personal and professional lives, all while building a sense of community and shared understanding among its listeners,” Dillahunt says. “I hope the pilot episodes serve as a learning space for our students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers.”

Dillahunt says she is most looking forward to “stepping outside of her comfort zone” by taking executive education courses at Sloan and interacting with new faculty and students. She looks forward to  working with her faculty hosts, Catherine D'Ignazio, author of Data Feminism and director of the Data+Feminism Lab, and Fotini Christia, a political scientist and director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC).

Dillahunt’s research studies the impact of technology on the environment, employment  and health.

“I've had the pleasure of working with urban planners before, although not to this extent,” Dillahunt says. “I'm embedded in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, home of the largest urban planning faculty in the U.S. It's exciting to be in a new environment with new approaches and ways of thinking. I'm looking forward to exploring more about what lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction, urban planning and community-based participatory research.” 

Dillahunt has just wrapped up her Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, where she published several research articles, some of which will be presented at this year’s CSCW conference, planned initial episodes for her podcast and observed Scaling Minority-Owned Businesses, a course in Harvard’s Business School.

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Learn more about Tawanna Dillahunt’s research and publications by visiting her UMSI faculty profile.