Skip to main content

University of Michigan School of Information

Menu
A headshot of Silvia Lindtner

Silvia Lindtner

Associate Professor of Information, School of Information, Associate Professor of Art and Design, Penny W Stamps School of Art and Design and Associate Professor of Digital Studies Institute, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Email: [email protected] Phone: 734/936-0671
Office: School of Information/North Quad 3446 Faculty Role: Faculty Potential PhD Faculty Advisor: Yes Personal website Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing News About Silvia Lindtner

Biography

Silvia Margot Lindtner (she/her) is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan in the School of Information and Director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC). She has conducted almost two decades of fieldwork in China, advancing the social and cultural study of technology. For the academic year of 2024-25, Lindtner is a Visiting Scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center at the Yale Law School. She is the author of the award-winning book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020), and co-author of the multigraph Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths/MIT Press 2020). Lindtner has a courtesy appointment in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and is affiliated with several interdisciplinary centers and initiatives on campus including the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, the Science, Technology and Society Program, the Digital Studies Institute, the Michigan Interactive and Social Computing Research Group, and directs the Tech.Culture.Matters. research group. 

Lindtner has been a Visiting Associate Professor at NYU Shanghai (2021-2024), a CUSP (China-US Scholars Program) Fellow (2021-22), and a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program (2021-23). Lindtner’s research has been awarded support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), IIE (the Institute of International Education), IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services), Intel Labs, Google Anita Borg, and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation. Her work has appeared at ST&HV (Science, Technology, and Human Values), ESTS (Engaging Science, Technology and Society), SocialText, Women’s Studies Quarterly, China Information, ToCHI, ACM SIGCHI (Human-Computer Interaction), ACM CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing), among other venues.

CV

Pronouns

she/her

Areas of interest

Science and Technology Studies (STS), Cultural and Feminist Anthropology, China Studies, Global China, HCI (human computer interaction), Critical Computing, Global Communication and Media Studies, Technology Policy, AI Justice

Honors & Awards

Joseph Levenson Prize for China Scholarship post 1900 by the association for Asian Studies (for Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation) 

FRANCIS L.K. HSU BOOK PRIZE, awarded by the Society for East Asian Anthropology (for Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation) 

Distinguished Member, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) 

PIP (Public Intellectual Program) Fellowship, 2021-23 

CUSP (China-US Scholars Program) Fellowship, 2021-22

Education

PhD, Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine 
BS/MS of Applied Science, Media Technology and Design, University of Hagenberg, Austria

News about Silvia Lindtner

Quoted by The Wall Street Journal. Associate Professor Silvia Lindtner. America had 'quiet quitting.' In China, young people are 'letting it rot.'
Lindtner: China’s youth are “lying flat” to protest China’s work culture

Lindtner discusses why China’s young adults and fresh graduates are “lying flat” and “letting it rot.” 

More Info
Quoted by PBS. Associate professor Silvia Lindtner. Inside China's Tech Boom: The story of China's meteoric rise to the forefront of global innovation.
Lindtner: To understand how China innovates is to rethink what innovation means

In a new PBS documentary, UMSI associate professor Silvia Lindtner talks about China’s rise to the forefront of innovation.

More Info