November 2022

Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy gave the closing Keynote on Thick HCI: Anthropology in the midst of Technocracy at India HCI-2022 at BITS Hyderabad on 11 November. 

In this talk, she briefly outlined her journey as a social anthropologist in the field of HCI  working besides computer and engineering scientists. Through her research projects, she traced the evolution of the anthropological lens in understanding and broadening HCI and technology adoption in the context of developing nations. Having spent the last two decades doing ethnographic fieldwork on the use of new information technologies resource constrained contexts, she has encountered time and again a host of technology practices that flagrantly defied stereotypical understanding and framing of internet technologies in the global south displaying rich, informed and focussed use of mobile and internet technologies.