About Me

I am a sociologist and Professor of Informatics in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. My scholarly interests are broad and include social behavior and user-centered design (across species) along with cognition and culture; digital and analog technologies in everyday life; privacy and secrecy; camouflage and deception; gender; time and space; home and work; ethnographic methods.

My work has been featured extensively in the media, ranging from NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and programs on PBS and MSNBC to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Working Mother and Fast Company. I have served as a consultant to a number of companies including HP, Motorola, Gillette, Steelcase, and Hilton Hotels—as well as non-profits, start-ups, and business consultancies.

My published books include Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life and Islands of Privacy: Disclosure and Concealment in Everyday Life, both with the University of Chicago Press, as well as Watching Closely: A Guide to Ethnographic Observation with Oxford University Press. I also wrote an award-winning nonfiction picture book for middle grade readers and up, Gorillas Up Close, and a fun board book for toddlers, What is Baby Gorilla Doing? Both are published by Henry Holt and feature the amazing photographs of John Dominski and Miguel Martinez.

I was …

…a research assistant on the first NSF grant to study the diffusion of computers in the workplace,

…the first researcher outside of the engineering and natural sciences to receive an external grant from Intel Architecture Labs, and

…the first woman elected chair of the American Sociological Association’s section on Computing and Information Technology.

I am now…

…co-founder and co-director (along with Patrick Shih) of the first dedicated Animal Informatics PhD program in the world (as far as we can tell).  Program website.

How to pronounce “Christena”

“Christena” is pronounced just like the more common “Christina” (chri-STEE-na). My name, like my mom’s, uses the Dutch spelling.