Conference Chairs

Jan English Lueck is a Professor of Anthropology at San José State University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future. She is Past President of the Southwestern Anthropological Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Work. Jan is an advocate for ethnofutures, integrating ethnography and forecasting, and she writes ethnographies about societies who actively create new cultural futures, from China to Silicon Valley. Her books include Cultures@SiliconValley, now in its second edition; Being and Well-being: Health and the Working Bodies of Silicon Valley; and Busier than Ever! Why American Families Can’t Slow Down (with Charles Darrah and James Freeman). Her forthcoming book is Reengineering Nature in Silicon Valley.
Jan’s EPIC papers & presentations

Sam Ladner is a sociologist and long-time member of the EPIC community. She is the author of Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector and Mixed Methods: A Short Guide to Applied Mixed Methods Research. She has worked on dozens of advanced software projects including Alexa, the Echo Look, Windows 10, Microsoft Office 2016, Cortana, and HoloLens. She currently works at Workday, an enterprise software company, as a Principal Researcher studying the future of work. She received her PhD in sociology from York University and lives in the Bay Area with her husband and cat. When Sam isn’t co-chairing EPIC’s annual conference, she teaches the EPIC Course Ethnographic Research Design & Innovation.
Sam’s EPIC papers & presentations.

Jamie Sherman is a cultural anthropologist and a senior product researcher at Facebook. Previously she was a senior research scientist at Intel. Her research background is in techniques and technologies of self-transformation, performance, and dynamics of race, gender, and play. Recently her work has focused on emergent technological practices, from quantified self to virtual reality and the future of entertainment. Her research has developed usages and driven strategies for video game play, media creation, and online toxicity. Jamie holds a PhD in anthropology from Princeton.
Jamie’s EPIC papers & presentations

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE