Biting the Hand that Feeds You: An Award Talk about Legitimacy Traps and HCI

Abstract: At CHI 2025, I received SIGCHI’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Research and was invited to give a presentation. This was one of those few talks at CHI that aren’t reviewed in any way, so it was an opportunity for sure. I watched the videos of prior presentation for this award, but found the autobiographical nature of most a little uninspiring and decided to do something different. Several of our UCI colleagues were present for the talk (thank you!) but we thought it might be fun to repeat that presentation for the department. I will largely repeat my award talk, speak a little about why I chose to approach it as I did, and talk some about the response that it garnered, both in the room and later.

Bio: Paul Dourish is Chancellor’s Professor and the Steckler Endowed Chair in Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he directs the Steckler Center for Responsible, Ethical, and Accessible Technology. He holds appointments in Informatics and Anthropology, and is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses primarily on understanding information technology as a site of social and cultural production, combining human-computer interaction, social informatics, and science and technology studies. He is the author of several books, most recently “The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information” (MIT Press, 2017). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the British Computer Society (BCS), and is a member of the SIGCHI Academy. He has been awarded the AMIA Diana Forsythe Prize and has twice won the ACM CSCW conference’s Lasting Impact Award. In 2025, he received ACM SIGCHI’s award for Lifetime Achievement in Research.

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University College, London, and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh. Before joining the faculty at UCI, he was a Senior Member of Research Staff in the Computer Science Laboratory of Xerox PARC; he has also held research positions at Apple and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC, and visiting positions at Stanford, MIT, the IT University of Copenhagen, Intel, and Microsoft Research.

This seminar is both online and in-person:
Zoom Link