Hi, I’m Sebastian Rodriguez! I’m a researcher and engineer with an interdisciplinary background that spans the digital humanities, information science, social science, and internet studies. I currently work for metaLAB (at) Harvard within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. I also lead engineering for the AI Pedagogy Project, and frequently collaborate with the Data Nutrition Project on AI research and educational initiatives.
My current research examines the social, political, and ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence. I wrote an MSc thesis at the Oxford Internet Institute on how activists in the United States use physical and digital design practices to resist and subvert AI-driven policing technologies like predictive policing and facial recognition. As the lead engineer of the AI Pedagogy Project, I developed an interactive AI Guide to support non-technical educators in understanding the capabilities and limitations of generative AI. I am also a co-investigator of metaLAB’s AI Personality Study, where I’m collaborating with the Max Planck Institute for Human Development to examine how LLMs adapt their “personality” depending on a user’s language or cultural background. Beyond research, I also design and develop AI curricula, including Sage Publishing’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course and Johns Hopkins University’s Strategy and Implementation of AI for City Government course. More recently, I co-organized a Public AI Summit with the Data Nutrition Project and Harvard University, and co-taught a J-term course at Harvard on AI Design for Ocean Solutions.
Previously, my work has explored fields such as surveillance, disinformation, critical security studies, and human-computer interaction, often through the lens of the digital humanities. I published a paper on the legal structures enabling U.S. mass surveillance, created a map to visualize the domestic deployment of predator drones in the U.S., and have presented posters at numerous conferences, including the Digital Humanities Summer Institute Conference & Colloquium, the Critical Digital Humanities International Conference, and the Association of Canadian Archivists Annual Conference. I was a member of the Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto Beyond Disinformation research cluster, where I co-authored a policy report on the digital communications strategies of authoritarian empires. I also investigated the use of private military contractors in U.S. domestic governance and policing as a member of the University of Toronto’s Ouroboros Project, and examined how deceptive design strategies originate in post-WWII manipulative marketing campaigns as an undergraduate fellow at the University of Toronto’s Critical Digital Humanities Initiative.
As an engineer, I often collaborate with educators and researchers to translate their work into modern, interactive, and accessible websites. I led web development for the University of Toronto’s Failure: Learning in Progress Project, where I built a platform for open educational resources on failure pedagogy; and I worked with the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s 2022 3M National Teaching Fellows to develop the REFLECT Project, where I created an interactive visualization tool that helps educators reflect on their teaching and learning practice. I have also worked as a web developer for the University of Toronto’s Knowledge Media Design Institute, and recently implemented a redesign of the Data Nutrition Project’s website.
I obtained a Master of Science in Social Science of the Internet from the University of Oxford, and a Bachelor of Information from the University of Toronto.