Morgan G. Ames

Summer 2012 Fellow

Morgan G. Ames draws on training in anthropology, communication, and computer science to research the ways we make sense of new technologies in our everyday lives. She is a doctoral candidate in Stanford University’s Department of Communication and a former National Science Foundation graduate fellow. For her dissertation research, Morgan is investigating the social meanings of the One Laptop Per Child project, tracing its intellectual history and assessing its deployments across the Americas. She spent six months in 2010 conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Paraguay, and is also involved with OLPC research initiatives in Peru, Uruguay, Haiti, and Birmingham, Alabama. With the support of Nokia Research, Morgan previously explored how middle- and working-class families with young children use media and communications technologies. She has also collaborated with research teams at Google, Yahoo!, and Intel. Morgan is advised by Professor Fred Turner at Stanford, and has completed the requirements for a PhD minor in anthropology. She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from UC Berkeley in spring 2004 and a Master’s degree in information science from UC Berkeley in spring 2006.