contact:

lbridges [at] virginia.edu

Lauren Bridges is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and a 2023-2024 fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She researches the sociotechnical, political economic, and environmental politics of digital infrastructures. Her academic writing has been published in journals such as Information, Communication & Society (here and here), Big Data & Society, and New Media & Society. Her work has received academic awards and honorary mentions from associations such as the International Communication Association, National Communication Association, and the Association of Internet Researchers. In addition to her academic writing, Bridges has written for The Guardian, been interviewed on PRX The World (NPR Boston), CBC Spark, BBC Newsday, NPR's 1A, the Anti-Dystopians podcast, and NBC (here and here).

Bridges is co-PI of a grant from the Internet Society Foundation, “Geographies of Digital Wasting,” which is based on a global collaborative project tracing the global flows and practices of digital wasting throughout the tech supply chain. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in communication from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in creative writing, publishing, and editing from the University of Melbourne, and a B.A. in business from Queensland University of Technology. Prior to academia, she worked in academic publishing and the nonprofit sector with a focus on social policy. She is currently writing a book on the limits of digital growth and the elemental politics of digital infrastructure expansion in Northern Virginia and Southern California.