Natasha Dow Schüll is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her work explores the psychic life of technology with a focus on themes of addiction, anxiety, and affect modulation.
Her 2012 book, ADDICTION BY DESIGN: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (Princeton University Press 2012), parses the intimate relationship between the experience of gambling addiction and casino industry design tactics, showing how architectural, atmospheric, ergonomic, audiovisual, and algorithmic-computational techniques are marshaled to suspend -- and monetize -- gamblers’ attention. Her current book project, KEEPING TRACK (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, under contract), explores the rise of sensor-based, digital technologies of the self and the new modes of self-care and self-regulation they offer. Her documentary film, BUFFET: All You Can Eat Las Vegas, has screened multiple times on PBS and appeared in numerous film festivals.
Schüll graduated Summa Cum Laude from UC Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology in 1993 and returned to receive her PhD in 2003. She held postdoctoral positions as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy and as a fellow at NYU’s International Center for Advanced Studies. She joined MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society in 2007 where she was awarded tenure before moving to New York University in 2015. Schüll’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among other sources.
Schüll’s research and op-eds have been featured in such national media venues as 60 minutes, The New York Times, Economist, Atlantic, Mother Jones, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, Forbes, Boston Globe, Salon, Chicago Tribune, Las Vegas Sun, 99% Invisible, NPR, WGBH, and WNYC.
For media inquiries, contact Dove Pedlosky: dove@nyu.edu | 212.992.9492
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