Mar Hicks

Mar Hicks is an Affiliate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.

Hicks is Associate Professor of Data Science School of Data Science at the University of Virginia.

Hicks is an author, historian, and professor doing research on the history of computing, labor, technology, and queer science and technology studies.

Their research focuses on how gender and sexuality bring hidden technological dynamics to light, and how the experiences of women and LGBTQIA people change the core narratives of the history of computing in unexpected ways.

Hicks’s multiple award-winning book, Programmed Inequality (MIT Press, 2017), looks at how the British lost their early lead in computing by discarding women computer workers, and what this cautionary tale tells us about current issues in high tech. Their new work looks at resistance and queerness in the history of technology.

Hicks is also co-editor of the book Your Computer Is On Fire (MIT Press, 2021), a volume of essays about how we can begin to fix our broken high tech infrastructures.

Before joining UVA, Hicks was Associate Professor of History of Technology at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and was a fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2018-2019. Hicks holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Duke University in History, and a B.A. in History from Harvard.