Menu Close
Assistant Professor, Penn State

Priya Kumar is an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. Her research examines how the datafication of family life affects privacy and agency. She earned her PhD from the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, and her dissertation examined the privacy implications of parents posting pictures of their children on social media, also known as sharenting. Dr. Kumar's academic research has been published in top-tier scholarly venues across the fields of information, communication, and human-computer interaction. She has discussed her work with national media, including NPR, Wired, and Buzzfeed as well as written about her work for Slate and Time, among others. Her academic research has earned best paper awards from the iConference and the International Communication Association (ICA), and her news research for the American Journalism Review was nominated for a Mirror Award, the highest honor in media reporting. Before graduate school, Dr. Kumar worked on the Ranking Digital Rights project, which evaluates the world's largest technology companies on their respect for users' rights to freedom of expression and privacy. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan School of Information, where she designed her own curriculum in data storytelling. She also holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of Maryland in journalism and government & politics. Find Dr. Kumar on Twitter @DearPriya and at priyakumar.org.

Experience

  • –present
    PhD Candidate in Information Studies, University of Maryland

Education

  • 2014 
    University of Michigan, M.S. Information