In this role, Bardzell aims to expand the reach of SIGCHI research and practice externally, seeking to raise the impact of SIGCHI in and beyond the ACM community; and internally, replacing barriers with pathways to participation in the Global South, adjacent academic disciplines and more.
“I am committed to making ACM SIGCHI accountable to our membership, and to systematizing processes that will establish equity and inclusivity as the norm,” said Bardzell. “I decided to run for the executive vice president position on the SIGCHI Executive Committee in part because it provides me the platform to engage in academic leadership in a way that aligns with my research and values. I hope to be able to help advance access to computing for marginalized populations where marginalization results from any combination of physical, economic, sociopolitical, demographic and epistemological barriers.”
In her role as the executive vice president, Bardzell will focus on creating and bolstering leadership pipelines, developing and sustaining mentorship programs, and strengthen existing infrastructures and programs for those who have been historically marginalized, while assisting the president in leading and managing SIGCHI.
Currently serving as the SIGCHI executive committee’s vice-president at large, Bardzell has a long history of leadership with the organization. She serves as chair and co-founder of ACM SIGCHI CARES committee, a resource for those who experience discrimination or harassment in violation of ACM’s policies governing SIG activities; and is a member of the steering committee for SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) Conference Series.
Bardzell’s other recent ACM activities include serving as papers co-chair for the 2021 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) and co-chair of the new “Critical and Sustainable Computing” paper subcommittee for the 2021 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). She also served as co-chair of the “Specific Application Areas” subcommittee for the CHI2020 conference and general co-chair for DIS in 2019.
She has been honored with 15 best paper and best paper honorable mention awards at SIGCHI conferences and iConference since 2010. She also received Diversity Champion Recognition: Trailblazer at ACM CHI2018.
Bardzell’s research leverages feminism, design, and social science to support technology’s role in social change. Her work explores how to broaden participation and stakeholder engagement in areas like women’s health, sustainable agriculture and food politics, and global ecology and environment justice. She has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on more than $13 million in external grant awards to date.
Bardzell is the co-editor of “Critical Theory and Interaction Design” (MIT Press, 2018) and co-author of “Humanistic HCI” (Morgan & Claypool, 2015). She also co-directs the Cultural Research in Technology Lab at Penn State.