Jenny Davis

Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair
Professor of Sociology
Director of Graduate Studies

Jenny L. Davis is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, an Honorary Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University, and a 2024-2026 Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

She works at the intersection of social psychology and technology studies, focusing on the ways social forces embed within and are affected by, technological systems. Her first book, How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things (MIT Press 2020) presents an operational framework for the analysis and design of technologies in society. Her forthcoming book The Injustice of Fairness: Algorithmic Reparation and the Case for Redress shifts the foundation of algorithmic ethics, challenging 'fairness' as the default value-standard (co-authored with Apryl Williams) (UC Press, 2026).

With particular attention to AI and the infrastructures that sit underneath, Jenny maintains active collaborations within and outside of academia, applying a sociological lens to the ways emergent technologies infuse our social worlds, to what effect, and how things might be otherwise.

CV: https://helicon-copper-t6ks.squarespace.com/s/CVOfficial.pdf