Assistant Professor of International Studies
Digital infrastructure and information technology; spatial politics; surveillance; empire; ethnography
Carnegie 407
651-696-6913
[email protected]
Alix Johnson is a cultural anthropologist whose research is focused on the social, material, and political life of information and information technology. Her current work examines technological infrastructures (like data centers, fiber-optic cables, and sonar surveillance networks) as a lens on questions of sovereignty, emerging spatial politics, and enduring formations of imperial power – especially in Iceland and the broader Arctic. Dr. Johnson’s book manuscript in-progress, “Where Cloud is Ground: Placing Data and Making Place,” is an ethnography of the data storage industry in Iceland and was selected in 2020 for the Atelier Series at the University of California Press. Her research also appears in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Culture Machine, City & Society, and Journal of Environmental Media.
Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2018
M.A. Cultural Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2013
B.A. Linguistics and French, University of California, Berkeley, 2009