Assistant Professor
University of Wisconsin - Madison

Marie Hicks is an assistant professor of history of technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her BA from Harvard University and her MA and Ph.D. from Duke University. Hicks researches how gender and sexuality help us understand the hidden dynamics of technological systems. Her new book, Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press) explains why an attention to structural discrimination changes our core assumptions about the history of computing and about technological progress in general. She is currently working on a book about the early history of algorithmic bias, and how technologies construct normative identities. Hicks teaches courses on the history of computing, disasters, and gender and sexuality studies. Before entering academia, she worked as a UNIX systems administrator. For more about her work, see her website, www.mariehicks.net or her book website, www.programmedinequality.com