Professor Ribes studies how information technologies (IT) and technical experts are reshaping our contemporary world. Of course, IT has been doing this for some time and so he also looks back in time and asks: how have we come to live in this world of technological artifacts and proliferating experts? Mostly he is an ethnographer – the traditional methodology of the anthropologist – and studies technology by observing and working with scientists, technical workers and other experts as they go about their daily activities. To understand our world we must open the black boxes of science and technology to investigate the work of ‘technical’ people and things.
He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) from the University of California at San Diego and came to Georgetown University from the University of Michigan where he did a post-doc at the School of Information. His research and teaching interests, which lie at the intersection of sociology, philosophy and history, have focused on the emerging phenomena of Cyberinfrastructure (or networked information technologies for the support of science) and how these are transforming the practice and organization of contemporary knowledge production.
Professor Ribes has several articles published in major peer-reviewed journals, including Information and Organization, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems. He has a chapter in the 2008 MIT Press edited volume (Olson, Zimmerman, Bos) 'Scientific Collaboration on the Internet'. He recently finished co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (JCSCW) on Cyberinfrastructure and eScienc; he is currently editing a volume for Science, Technology and Human Values (STH&V) focusing on the Empirical and Conceptual in STS. Prof. Ribes is currently a principal investigator on several National Science Foundation grants studying the consequences of novel information technologies on the work of scientists and exploring new patterns of distributed collaboration.
As a member CCT, Professor Ribes teaches the course “Infrastructure Studies: Knowledge, Distribution and Power” and a variety of other offerings, such as introductions to Science and Technology Studies, and methodology courses on grounded theory and qualitative studies of technology.