Humans of Banbury: Interview with Leysia Palen

During the Banbury Center’s March 2024 meeting, “When No Response is Not an Option for Science,” I was able to speak with Leysia Palen, Ph.D. Professor Palen is the founding chair of the department of information science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with an additional appointment in computer science. She is also a faculty fellow with the ATLAS Institute and the Institute of Cognitive Science. Professor Palen earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in information and computer science. We spoke about her role as an educator and researcher in this ever-changing field.

Can you tell me about what you do in, more or less, two sentences?

I’m an information science professor; In 2015, after being a professor of computer science since 1998, I founded the department of information science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Information science is really about the social science of computing and how computing is affecting society in all sorts of different ways – from micro to macro. Another way of describing it is the study of human-data interaction, and all the ways in which we’re doing that. So, it’s a field that teaches and requires a strong combination of computational skills, and a range of social science skills.

Those of us who are aligned with the Information School, or “I-School” movement as it is known are really interested in studying the meaning of data and information in society. I’m so happy that the I-School movement has reached departments at universities because we are able to educate not only graduate students – which we’ve been doing for a little while – but also undergraduates, because they are, of course, quite invested in their futures; they understand that their futures are affected by the decisions that we make around technology. Sometimes, the decisions work out nicely, but often, they do not. We hope for the movement to be an effective and critical examination of the role of technology in society.

What is your favorite part about what you do? What gets you excited to go to work?

It’s so interesting to have the privilege of being a researcher and a teacher-scholar for almost 30 years now. There are things that have always excited me and stayed true, but aspects of what that career means have changed as my life has developed. Being able to formalize curiosity and ask questions in really systematic ways is something that I really enjoy, and being able to understand the progression of technology in our world is exciting; it’s alarming, I will say, but it does feel relevant and meaningful.

The research is always so interesting, and has motivated me since I was a young person. But now, as I’ve grown into this career so much, the real love that I have is teaching to our young students, enabling a cadre of Ph.D. students who are going on to be leaders in government and academia, and run their own labs. Our undergraduates are doing the same thing – often in industry, but in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. With my research, I can only carry the ball so far; there are lots of emergent problems and opportunities in tech. What I do know is that there is power in the multiplier of helping others to be able to do the same. So, my greatest joy is probably helping others understand their own inclinations toward curiosity, and how to formalize that into scientific investigation.

What are some of the challenges you face in your work?

As an information scientist, there are so many problems to work on. Sometimes it’s hard to know which to prioritize, because it is like choosing a favorite among – if this analogy works – your children. There are really important issues to investigate, and there’s only so much time and so many resources to do it.  The challenge is making those choices along certain lines of priority, and knowing that I might not be able to initially take on other important issues; I only can hope that others do and can pick up where I necessarily must leave off. That’s where I fall back on teaching. In instruction, I hope that I can help others take on those arrays of problems that feel countless.

How did you first become interested in information science?

I was a kid of the 80s, which is when PCs started coming along. As you might be able to imagine, there was a lot of excitement around computing – it’s a kind of excitement that has never really ended, has it? I’ve been engaged, but I’ve also been a bit critical of it: Why is computing so interesting? What will computers do for us? What is the hopefulness that it brings? Is the hopefulness always warranted, and do we need to look at critically?

I lucked out by going to the university of my hometown – UC San Diego – which turned out to be a great university to go to, even though I stayed close to home. That was where a lot of early human-computer interaction work was going on; I got the benefit of being able to apprentice with some really great people with great minds who were thinking far ahead. I just kept working in the area, and is one that has evolved and expanded so quickly.

I think the exciting part about this field for a person – and what keeps one going, even when there have been some unexpected turns in what technology has done for us – is that it’s a field that so rapidly changes. Pretty much every day you have to wake up and learn something new. It’s a little bit exhausting, to be honest. It’s exciting, though, and it feels important. What I like to try to do is demystify the university, academic pursuits, and computing, so that more and more people can be included in the questions of, “Why computing?”, “Why data?”, “What is my role in it, and what can I do?” – as a part of this combined socio-technical future that we’re invariably a part of.

Is there a recent development in your field that you believe will have a large impact?

In keeping with the theme of why I think I’ve been asked to this Banbury meeting – I am fundamentally interested in understanding the social phenomenon of what’s called, “the informal response” in our activities. Informal response is the sociological term for what we now see as the social media-abetted response. How does the public response to things that are happening in our world change the larger information ecosystem that we’re in, and how does that change our institutions?  It’s all technologically enabled. There are, to put it simply, pros and cons; it’s very complex. But I am fundamentally interested in how that participation – for good or for ill – changes how we work together.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lens through which you view your work?

I sometimes wonder how people outside the formal practice of exercising scholarship see scholars. I think that we must be seen as something that we seem to be, which is distanced from the subject that we study. In fact, we’re all drawn so personally to our subjects of interest, yet we still want to examine them systematically. I don’t know a way in which the pandemic hasn’t touched everyone’s lives; it’s touched my life in some really profound ways. It’s very sadly made me feel a little less hopeful, and a little more critical about what technology can do for the collective spirit.

I think that the pandemic has taught me how politicized science and knowledge can become, and yet, it feels to me that knowledge can be inclusive. Even with difference, we can come to agreement about what’s good for the social good. If we could get back to that, we could live with these differences, and keep as many people safe as possible. I thought I was healthily critical of technology. Turns out, I was a little bit more optimistic than perhaps I should have been. I think that we have do some repair in terms of the tools that we have available to us, and we have to think about how we can create more opportunities to come together, rather than be divided and separate.

This is your first time at the Banbury Center. What do you think of the meeting so far?

I’m so honored to be here; it feels really important to be here. There is nothing better than to learn in an interdisciplinary setting. The amount one can learn in a couple of hours here far outpaces what one can learn on one’s own over much more time. It’s transformational. It was hard for me to come here at this particular time in my life for personal reasons. But the topic felt urgent, and the opportunity to contribute what the scholarship in my lab has demonstrated felt really important and timely; I wanted to be a part of it. So, I’m really happy to be here, and grateful for the opportunity. I’m so glad that Banbury exists and does what it does; I think it has a wonderful mission.