Cultural anthropologist. Cyberneticist. Chief Crocheting Officer.#
Alexandra Zafiroglu is a Professor of Cybernetics at the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the ANU Futures scheme.
After completing her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Brown University in 2004, Alex commenced a diverse career at Intel Corporation. During her 15 years at Intel, Alex made significant contributions to the R&D and commercial development of technology across the Advanced Research, Digital Home and Internet of Things divisions, being listed as co-inventor on 11 patents. In 2016, Alex was appointed Principal Engineer in Social Science within the Internet of Things Division and was Intel’s foremost domain expert and research practitioner in homes and home life. Alex has also authored multiple publications, presented at academic, regional and industry conferences and is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Community.
Currently, she is interested in the role that social scientists play in exercising ethics, accountability, and data rights in the deployment of commercial cyber-physical systems. She is also spreading the art of crochet, crochet-and-felting desktop-sized ‘co-workers’ figures to keep team members company during the Great Virtual Institute/Work From Home Experiment of 2020.