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Molly Steenson


Associate Professor

Molly Wright Steenson is Senior Associate Dean for Research for the College of Fine Arts and an associate professor in the School of Design. She held the K&L Gates Associate Professorship in Ethics & Computational Technologies from 2018–21.

She is the author of the book Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT Press, 2017), which explores the radical history of design, architecture, AI and cybernetics from the 1950s to the present. It focuses on the practices of Nicholas Negroponte, Cedric Price, Christopher Alexander, and Richard Saul Wurman. She's the co-editor of Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press, 2019) with Laura Forlano and Mike Ananny, an edited volume that looks at the impact of the Bauhaus as it turns 100.

Molly holds a PhD in architecture from Princeton University and a Master's in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture. She was a resident professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Ivrea, Italy, where she led the Connected Communities research group (early 2003–late 2004), and was an adjunct professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in the Media Design Practices Program. From 2013–15, Molly was an assistant professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught data visualization, digital studies, and led Mellon-funded research projects in the digital humanities. 

Molly has also worked with the web since 1994 at such companies as Reuters, Scient, Netscape, and Razorfish. She cofounded Maxi, an award-winning women's webzine, in the 90s. As a design researcher, she examines the effect of personal technology and digital media on their users, including projects in India and China for Microsoft Research and ReD Associates for Intel Research.

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