Lucy Suchman

Lucy Suchman is Professor Emerita of the Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. She holds a PhD in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley (1984). From 1979 to 2000 she worked at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), where she rose from research intern to Principal Scientist and head of the Work Practice and Technology area. Her landmark study of how people actually used photocopiers — demonstrating that users do not follow the logical procedures designers assumed — became the empirical foundation for her book Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Cambridge University Press, 1987), which produced a paradigmatic shift in cognitive science and human-computer interaction by foregrounding the role of context in human cognition. The expanded second edition, Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (Cambridge University Press, 2007), addresses how agencies are figured at the human-machine interface and how they might be reconfigured. Her current research engages critical studies of autonomous weapons systems and military AI. She served as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) in 2016–17 and is a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). Her awards include the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science (2002), the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award (2010), and the 4S John Desmond Bernal Prize (2014).

Selected Bibliography
Suchman, Lucy. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Suchman, Lucy. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.