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Will Sutherland

AUG.14.2026

Research

I prefer to talk about topics in terms of particular historical contexts and problems, rather than in terms of broad, enduring social categories. Below I have summarized the research projects I have been involved with briefly in those terms. At the bottom of this page is a list of the grants I have worked on (skip there).

Broadly speaking my training is in pragmatic interactionist sociology and social informatics. I favor depth-wise case studies or ethnographic work in order to develop new, empirically-grounded conceptualizations of emerging social phenomena.

Projects

Research software engineering: coordination and impacts

Research software engineering is a growing skillset and career path in the sciences. Many longstanding but often invisible kinds of software work in the sciences are gaining new visibility under the term research software engineer (RSE), and new teams of RSEs are emerging at universities, particularly in the UK, US, and mainland Europe. This study combines a broad interview study with large-scale trace data analysis of scientific software projects in order to characterize and measure the impact that research software engineers have on research software and scientific outcomes. Moreover, we want to understand the full variety of organizational forms that RSE work takes, including scientist-RSEs embedded in projects long term, briefer incubator-like engagements at the department or university level, and many others.

Selected Publications

More to come...

  • Bock, T., Sutherland, W., Atkisson, C., Tanweer, A., Herbsleb, J. D., & Vasilescu, B. (2026, April). Understanding the Impact of Research Software Engineers on Scientific Software Development: A Mixed-Methods Study. In Proceedings of the 2026 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering and Research Software (pp. 1-3).

Collective design and deliberation in the data deluge

The next generation of astronomical instruments will produce tens of petabytes of data. This scale brings with it new kinds of automation in scientific work, and it requires astronomers to band together in large heterogeneous groups to design their instruments. For the last three years Anissa Tanweer and I have conducted ethnographic work with a large observatory project, spanning the end of its commissioning phase and the beginning of its operations phase. We are examining how the community of astronomers behind the project develop new deliberative processes to design and evaluate automated systems, and how they reorganize to effectively coordinate a huge variety of research programs. This work is aimed at understanding the ramifications of data-intensive science within scientific communities, but it also frames design as an organized endeavor at scale.

Selected Publications

More to come...

  • Sutherland, W., & Tanweer, A. (2026). Transparency as organizational accomplishment: How an astronomical collaboration learns to observe its algorithms. Information Research, 31(iConf), 1639-1651.
Talks
  • Transparency as organizational accomplishment: How an astronomical collaboration learns to observe its algorithms -- 2026 -- iConference, Edinburgh, Scotland.
  • Big Sky, big data, big changes: on the shifting moral economy of astronomy in an era of abundance — 2025 — Annual Meeting of American Astronomical Society, National Harbor, Maryland, USA
  • Making an issue out of an algorithm: Explication and opacity in the design of an astronomical survey cadence — 2024 — Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), Calgary, CA
  • Coding Astronomical Futures: Reconciling grand visions and material practice in the development of astronomical tools — 2023 — Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Infrastructure and exploration in research work

Growing movements to reform software development work in the sciences recommend more robust planning and design practices as well as more methodical patterns of contribution and code review. The daily work of research often demands rapid exploratory prototyping, with uncertain endpoints and timelines. Based on 6 years of ethnographic work with a research lab in observational cosmology (my dissertation work) I examined how they reconciled these contrasting commitments in practice, and how the tension between exploration and infrastructure development is central to the growth of research software systems.

Selected Publications

More to come...

  • Sutherland-Keller, W. (2025). Research Software Systems: Exploration and Infrastructure in Observational Cosmology. University of Washington.
Talks
  • From substrate to instrument: Software practice and rigor in an astrophysics collaboration — 2025 — Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Seattle, Washington, USA.
  • Software problems: Local change in Cosmology and Oceanography — 2024 — Scientific Software as a Social Practice Workshop, eScience Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Software and data infrastructures in the sciences

Software and data, as the primary materials of an emerging mode of science, have come to occupy an increasing central role in day-to-day research work in many fields. My work with colleagues at the University of North Carolina and at the University of Washington focused on the organizational ramifications of this transition: how research groups are reorganizing around the need to build robust software and data systems. In particular I worked closely with my colleague Andy Neang to make sense of his field work with an oceanographic collaboration.

Selected Publications
  • Sutherland, W., Neang, A. B., & Lee, C. P. (2025). Making Software Work Sustainable for the Academic Research Group: A Comparative Case Study. In Proceedings of the 58th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 7359–7368). https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2025.880.
  • Lee, C. P., Sutherland, W., Alimohammadi, N., Jones LeDoux, R., & Neang, A. B. (2025, August). The Agony and Ecstasy of Extended Research on Computational Systems. In Proceedings of the sixth decennial Aarhus conference: Computing X Crisis (pp. 223-231).
  • Neang, A. B., Sutherland, W., Ribes, D., & Lee, C. P. (2026). Moving Targets in Collaborative Science: Boundary Spanning in Transdisciplinary Iterative Problem Formation. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer interaction, 10(6).
  • Sutherland, W., Paine, D., & Lee, C. P. (2024). ‘The Cloud is Not Not IT’: Ecological Change in Research Computing in the Cloud. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 33(4), 1037-1069.
  • Neang, A. B., Sutherland, W., Ribes, D., & Lee, C. P. (2023). Organizing oceanographic infrastructure: The work of making a software pipeline repurposable. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(CSCW1), 1-18.
  • Neang, A. B., Sutherland, W., Beach, M. W., & Lee, C. P. (2021). Data integration as coordination: The articulation of data work in an ocean science collaboration. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW3), 1-25.
  • Feinberg, M., Sutherland, W., Nelson, S. B., Jarrahi, M. H., & Rajasekar, A. (2020). The new reality of reproducibility: The role of data work in scientific research. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW1), 1-22.
Talks
  • Making software work sustainable for the academic research group — 2025 — Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Waikoloa Village, Hawaii, USA
  • The New Reality of Reproducibility: The Role of Data Work in Scientific Research — 2020 — Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 2020 (virtual)

Gig work and platform precarity

Digital labor platforms like Uber, Taskrabbit, and Mechanical Turk aim to lower transaction costs and move work into individualized, extra-organizational contexts. Matching, trust, and escrow systems ease client and worker interactions, creating the category of rapid, digital gig work. It also creates precarity for workers by shifting more responsibilities onto the individual worker, and it shifts processes of hierarchical management towards materially-enacted systems of soft control. Mohammad Jarrahi and I developed an early survey of emerging problems in this space and focused work on a less-studied part of the sector: freelancing work on Upwork. Highly complex freelancing work strains the automating capabilities of the platform model and surfaces distinct problems of autonomy and algorithmic opacity.

Selected Publications
  • Jarrahi, M. H., Newlands, G., Lee, M. K., Wolf, C. T., Kinder, E., & Sutherland, W. (2021). Algorithmic management in a work context. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211020332.
  • Jarrahi, M. H., Sutherland, W., Nelson, S. B., & Sawyer, S. (2020). Platformic management, boundary resources for gig work, and worker autonomy. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 29(1), 153-189.
  • Jarrahi, M. H., & Sutherland, W. (2019, March). Algorithmic management and algorithmic competencies: Understanding and appropriating algorithms in gig work. In International Conference on Information (pp. 578-589). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
  • Sutherland, W., & Jarrahi, M. H. (2018). The sharing economy and digital platforms: A review and research agenda. International Journal of Information Management, 43, 328-341.
Talks
  • How Upworkers Make Sense of Algorithms — 2019 — Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, 2019, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
  • Algorithmic Management and Algorithmic Competencies: Understanding and Appropriating Algorithms in Gig work — 2019 — The International Conference on Information, 2019, College Park, Maryland, USA

Mobile and nomadic work

Many forms of work are becoming more mobile and more nomadic. This involves particular forms of independence from organizational structures, in terms of work spaces, technological resources, temporality, and knowledge. Mohammad Jarrahi and I looked at this through interviews with digital nomads, who work remote jobs while traveling from place to place. The lifestyle of the digital nomad serves as an extreme case through which we can examine these different dimensions of organizational independence, as well as how people assemble infrastructures for their work from heterogeneous resources.

Selected Publications
  • Nash, C., Jarrahi, M. H., & Sutherland, W. (2021). Nomadic work and location independence: The role of space in shaping the work of digital nomads. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 3(2), 271-282.
  • Jarrahi, M. H., Philips, G., Sutherland, W., Sawyer, S., & Erickson, I. (2019). Personalization of knowledge, personal knowledge ecology, and digital nomadism. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 70(4), 313-324.
  • Nash, C., Jarrahi, M. H., Sutherland, W., & Philips, G. (2018, March). Digital nomads beyond the buzzword: Defining digital nomadic work and use of digital technologies. In International Conference on Information (pp. 207-217). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
  • Sutherland, W., & Jarrahi, M. H. (2017). The gig economy and information infrastructure: The case of the digital nomad community. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 1(CSCW), 1-24.
Talks
  • Gig Work in the Digital Nomad Community — 2018 — ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
  • Personalization of Knowledge, Personal Knowledge Ecology, and Digital Nomadism — 2017 — 80th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), Washington D.C., USA

Grants