Tonia Sutherland
BIO
Dr. Tonia Sutherland is assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Sutherland was an assistant professor in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. Sutherland holds a PhD and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information (formerly the School of Information Studies), and a BA in history, performance studies, and cultural studies from Hampshire College. Global in scope, Sutherland’s research focuses on entanglements of technology and culture, with particular emphases on critical and liberatory work within the fields of archival studies, digital studies, and science and technology studies.
Sutherland’s work critically examines the analog histories of modern information and communication technologies; addresses trends of racialized violence in 21st century digital cultures; and interrogates issues of race, gender, and culture in archival and digital spaces. In her work, Sutherland focuses on various infrastructures–technological, social, human, cultural–addressing important concerns such as gaps and vagaries; issues of equity and inclusivity; and developing more liberatory praxes.
Sutherland is the author of Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife (University of California Press, October 2023). In addition to serving as Co-Director of the Community Archives Lab at UCLA, she is also Co-Founder and Co-Director of AfterLab at the University of Washington iSchool. Sutherland serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at New York University and is a member of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2)’s Scholar Council. She has been a member of the American Studies Association, the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the Society of American Archivists and the Association for Library and Information Science Education. Her work appears in journals such as New Media and Society; The Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies; The American Archivist; The Black Scholar; Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture; Archival Science; The Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics; and Radical History Review.
