Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is an American scholar and writer. His work explores the interplay of social, economic, political, and technological forces in the process of social change. He is associate professor of

political sociology Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how ...

at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the and concurrent Rights Lab associate professor of social movements and human rights at the University of Nottingham's School of Sociology and Social Policy. He was previously assistant professor of political sociology at the

School of Public Policy at Central European University A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulso ...

. Choi-Fitzpatrick holds a PhD in sociology from the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

, where he was Assistant Director at the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change. Prior to academia he worked as a

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

advocate. From 2003 through 2009 he was on staff at

Free the Slaves Free the Slaves is an international non-governmental organization and lobby group, established to campaign against the modern practice of slavery around the world. It was formed as the sister organization of Anti-Slavery International but has sin ...

, the sister organization of

Anti-Slavery International Anti-Slavery International, founded as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, is an international non-governmental organisation, registered charity and advocacy group, based in the United Kingdom. It is the world's oldest inter ...

, itself the world's first and longest-running human rights NGO. He studied human rights and international security at the

Josef Korbel School of International Studies The Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver is a professional school of international affairs offering undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees. It is named in honor of the founding dean, Josef Korbel, father o ...

at the University of Denver. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of California - San Diego, Oxford, and Yale and is a global fellow at the

Center for Media, Data and Society The Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) (now closed) was a global research center at Central European University (CEU) that focused on media, communication and information policy. Located in Budapest, Hungary, CMDS produced scholarly and prac ...

Academic career

Most of Choi-Fitzpatrick's work, in one form or another, explores social change. In ''What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize What They Do'', Choi-Fitzpatrick argues that slaveholders play an important but overlooked role in shaping the tactics and outcomes of the contemporary

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

movement. Taking them seriously, he suggests, advances scholarship on social movements, human rights, and anti-trafficking. Policy implications include the possibility that international development efforts recognize that some of their beneficiaries are also rights violators. Early work along these lines can be found in a volume co-edited with

Alison Brysk Alison Brysk (born March 8, 1960) is an American political scientist who holds the Mellichamp Chair in Global Governance, Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in international Human Rights ...

: ''From Human Trafficking to Human Rights: Reframing Contemporary Slavery'' (University of Pennsylvania Press Series on Human Rights). Recent work on the interplay of politics and technology in the process of technological innovation produced ''The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance''
MIT Press
, in which Choi-Fitzpatrick argues that a host of technologies make contentious politics possible. While social media receives the most attention, a wider range of technology deserve causal credit for shaping socio-political change. A related project undertaken by Choi-Fitzpatrick's Good Drone Lab developed an award-winning method for estimating crowd sizes
NBC lx
. These efforts have been featured outlets like Fast Company an
Science
NOTE: The Good Drone has been noted for its path to publication—the book went through an open peer review process and the final publication is to be an open access PDF. It is one of the first books to be both open preview process _and_ open access publication. This process was highlighted in the podcas
New Book Network

Artistic engagements

Choi-Fitzpatrick is the co-founder o
Art Builds
a collective that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration in participatory art installations. The collective ha
exhibited work
at the Burning Man art festival, been commissioned to build art by the City of San Diego, and is using virtual reality technology to create mixed digital spaces for real-time artistic collaboration.

Bibliography

Books
''The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance.'' (2020) MIT Press.''What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize What They Do.'' (2017) Columbia University Press.
*[https://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?products_id=1511 ''Drones for Good: How to Bring Sociotechnical Thinking into the Classroom.'' (2020) Co-authored with Gordon Hoople. Morgan & Claypool.] Articles * Scholarly publications can be found a
Google Scholar
Public writing * Television appearances and public-facing writing can be found a
Muckrack

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Choi-Fitzpatrick, Austin Date of birth unknown Living people Sociology educators Place of birth missing (living people) Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters alumni 1977 births Academics of the University of Nottingham Academic staff of Central European University Josef Korbel School of International Studies people American human rights activists Human rights writers