Julian Posada

Personal Website: https://posada.website/

Julian Posada is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and a visiting scholar at the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 2024-25 academic year. His research integrates theories and methods from information science, sociology, and human-computer interaction to examine how technology is developed and used within various historical, cultural, and social contexts.

His current book project, under contract with the University of California Press, investigates the dynamics between human labor and data production in the artificial intelligence industry. Incorporating Latin American critical thought, this study emphasizes the experiences of workers in the region who are employed by digital platforms to produce machine learning data and validate algorithmic outputs. This research has been funded by the International Development Research Centre and the Social Science Research Council, with support from the McArthur, Ford, and Surdna foundations.

In addition to his focus on artificial intelligence, his interests extend to platform studies, labor studies, digital ethics and policy, social computing, and science and technology studies. An interdisciplinary scholar, he employs a mix of qualitative and quantitative social and computational research methods for data collection and analysis.

Posada obtained his Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Toronto. He also holds a maîtrise in the Humanities from Sorbonne University and a master’s degree in Sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS).