About Christina

 

Professor of Anthropology, University of North Texas

christina.wasson@unt.edu | +1 940 565 2752

 

Research Highlights

“This Handbook provides a brilliant, practical guide… A must-read for anyone seeking a broader lens that can make sense of the world” - Gillian Tett, Provost, Kings College, Cambridge University

  • I draw on participatory design to support the Bodo and Dimasa Heritage Digital Archive, a community-based digital archive for Indigenous communities in Northeast India.

  • Through my Design Anthropology class, I have led research projects for companies such as Blizzard Entertainment, Nissan, Microsoft, and Motorola.

Overview

My work is motivated by a passion for three Cs: communication, collaboration, and community-building, in both face-to-face and online contexts. On the one hand, these concepts are objects of investigation. On the other, they are characteristics of my partnership-oriented approach to research.

To investigate the three Cs, I draw on design anthropology, anthropology of technology, linguistic anthropology, and participatory design, integrating theoretical and applied dimensions.

I was trained as a linguistic anthropologist. After finishing my Ph.D., I worked for E-Lab, a design firm that used anthropological research to develop new product ideas. Here I developed an interest in the emergent field of design anthropology. I was a member of the founding steering committees for the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) and the Global Business Anthropology Summit.

Education

1996 Ph.D., Anthropology, Yale University
1989 M.Phil., Anthropology, Yale University
1987 B.A., Linguistics and Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley

Current Research Areas

interdisciplinary collaborations at unt

Collaborators at UNT have included faculty in the Department of Linguistics (where I am affiliated faculty), the College of Visual Arts and Design, the College of Information, and the College of Engineering.