Kristine Lu

Dr. Kristine J. Lu researches and designs tools, technologies, and systems for people-powered politics. Her research advances a vision of public life as practice, with a focus on understanding the underlying knowledge, skills, and dispositions behind democratic agency and the design of technologically mediated learning environments to build those capacities in individuals and communities. Her research projects are broadly divided into three major areas: social computing systems for civic capacity building, with a focus on organizational and ecosystem-level learning capacity; the design of authentic, computer-supported learning environments for people power, including formal-informal learning spaces for community organizing; and design research methods for power and social change. She works in engaged partnership with a variety of social and civic change-makers, including social movement organizations, local and national grassroots organizing networks, city governments, and student organizations.

She is a Faculty Research Affiliate of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she partnered with movement organizers across the Movement Innovation Collaborative in her postdoctoral work to co-design learning infrastructure for movement innovation using social computing tools. She received her Ph.D. in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, where she was a graduate researcher in the interdisciplinary Delta Lab and Design Research Fellow in Northwestern’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction+Design. Using community-based participatory action methods, her dissertation work contributed a grassroots capacity building model for starting a $3.5 million participatory budgeting effort in the City of Evanston, during which she co-founded and -led a grassroots organization for training students and volunteers to facilitate deliberations, develop policy briefs, canvass and conduct community outreach.

Her scholarly work has been published in the Proceedings of ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), Instructional Science, the Journal of Science Policy & Governance, and proceedings from the International Conference of the Learning Sciences. Prior to her doctoral work, Kristine was part of the journalism research team at the Pew Research Center working on quantitative projects on civic engagement and news attitudes. Her research experience includes work in computational linguistics, educational technology, and digital humanities.