Position Title
Associate Professor
1 Shields Avenue, Davis CA 95616
Education
- Ph.D., History of Science and Medicine, Yale University, 2016
- M.A., M.Phil., History of Science and Medicine, Yale University, 2014
- M.Phil., History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (Trinity College), 2009
- B.A., Mathematics, Harvard University, 2008
About
I am a historian of digital law, and I joined the STS Department in 2016. Please visit my website for contact information.
Research Focus
I investigate how law and policy have shaped the digital world. My first book, Software Rights, is a history of software patenting in the United States. My second is a history of Internet copyright under contract with Yale University Press.
Publications
Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
Winner of the Computer History Museum Prize
"Encoding Music: Perforated Paper, Copyright Law, and the Legibility of Code, 1880-1908," Case Western Reserve Law Review 71:2 (2020).
"The Long History of Software Patenting in the United States," in The Battle Over Patents: History and Politics of Innovation, ed. Naomi Lamoreaux and Stephen Haber (Oxford University Press, 2021).
"Patent Law and the Materiality of Inventions in the California Oil Industry: The Story of Halliburton v. Walker, 1936-1945," Enterprise & Society (2021).
“The Text in the Machine: American Copyright Law and the Many Natures of Computer Programs, 1974-1978,” Technology & Culture 57:4 (October 2016): 753-779.
Winner of the Samuel Eleazar and Rose Tartakow Levinson Prize
“Contested Ontologies of Software: The Story of Gottschalk v. Benson, 1963-1972,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 38:1 (January-March 2016): 23-33.
Winner of the Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize
“Embodied Software: Patents and the History of Software Development, 1946-1970,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:3 (July-September 2015): 8-19.
Teaching
Undergraduate
STS 11: Science on Trial
STS 110: Computing, Data, Law
STS 113: Business and Technology in the U.S.
STS 114: The Global Information Age
Graduate
Digital Technology History and Theory
Internet Studies
I'm happy to serve on dissertation and qualifying exam committees on topics such as digital governance, Internet cultures, business & technology, and law & science, even while on leave. Please reach out if you'd like to chat about this.
Awards
Computer History Museum Prize for outstanding book in the history of computing (Software Rights)
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Public Understanding of Science Grant
Smithsonian Institution Fellow
W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell Fellowship, Hoover Institution (Stanford University)
Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize, Society for the History of Technology, for best article on the history of electrical technologies
Herman E. Krooss Prize, Business History Conference, for best doctoral dissertation in business history
John Addison Porter Prize, Yale University, university-wide prize for best written work in any field of general human interest
Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Technology, Society for the History of Technology (SHOT)
Samuel Eleazar and Rose Tartakow Levinson Prize, Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), prize for the best first article by a new scholar