Judith Donath
| Judith Donath | |
|---|---|
Judith Donath giving a talk at the EPFL, on June 22, 2009
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| Born | May 7, 1962 |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Media Arts, Human–computer interaction, History |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Alma mater |
MIT Yale University |
| Thesis | Inhabiting the virtual city: The design of social environments for electronic communities (1997) |
| Doctoral advisor | Andrew B. Lippman |
| Known for | Educational software designer and builder, Social media research, Virtual world architect |
Judith Stefania Donath (born May 7, 1962) is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and the founder of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. She has written papers on various aspects of the Internet and its social impact, such as Internet society and community, interfaces, virtual identity issues, and other forms of collaboration that have become manifest with the advent of connected computing.
She combines concepts from evolutionary biology, architecture, ethnography, cognitive science, and various other disciplines, to develop methodologies for optimizing the design of mediated virtual cities on the internet and online virtual identities.
She is a pioneer of online social media applications, including the first postcard application and the first interactive art show competition. Her work has been shown internationally in museums and galleries and recently at the MIT Museum as a major exhibit.
Her research work includes issues centered on "identity and deception in online communities" and the creation of multiple virtual personae. In 1999 she researched the presence of deception in the online identities of Usenet users, as well as the reconstruction of the personality of an individual using data gathered from both online and offline encounters.
Donath obtained her Bachelor's degree in History from Yale and her Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Her work includes the design and development of educational software and experimental media.
On October 10, 1995, while still a Ph.D. candidate at MIT, she helped organize a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the MIT Media Lab by conceiving a mass online collaboration project which featured the construction of a large website by worldwide contributors. The event was named A Day in the Life of Cyberspace and is an early example of mass collaboration on the Internet.
Her pioneering work includes the first postcard service, named The Electric Postcard, and the first interactive art show, titled Portraits in Cyberspace.
Her recent work includes directing the exhibit Id/Entity which includes collaborative works on the subject of the transformation of portraiture through the use of modern computer technology.
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