Paul Dourish (born 1966) is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

best known for his work and research at the intersection of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

and

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

. Born in Scotland, he holds the Steckler Endowed Chair of Information and Computer Science at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

, where he joined the faculty in 2000, and where he directs the Steckler Center for Responsible, Ethical, and Accessible Technology. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACM, and the BCS, and is a two-time winner of the ACM

CSCW Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...

"Lasting Impact" award, in 2016 and 2021. In 2025, he received ACM SIGCHI's award for Lifetime Achievement in Research. Dourish has published three books and over 100 scientific articles, and holds 19 US patents.

Life

Born and raised in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, Dourish studied at St Aloysius' College. He then received a B.Sc. in

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

in 1989. He moved to work at Rank Xerox EuroPARC (later the Xerox Research Center Europe) in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, UK, during which time he completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

(UCL). After completing his Ph.D., he moved to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, working for

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

in Cupertino,

. He worked in research laboratories at

until they closed 10 months later and then at

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

's Palo Alto Research Center. In 2000, Dourish moved to Southern California, when he joined the faculty at the

. Since then, he has remained a full professor of Informatics. He has held visiting positions at

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

, the IT University of Copenhagen, and the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

Work

His published work is primarily in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction,

Computer supported cooperative work Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...

, and

Ubiquitous computing Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear seamlessly anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing imp ...

. He is the author of over 100 scientific publications, and holds 19 US patents. He is amongst the most prolific and widely cited scholars in Human-Computer Interaction;

's academic search system lists him as the fourth most influential author in the area while

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of Academic publishing, scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in Beta release, beta in November 2004, th ...

calculates his

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

at over 50. His research tends to draw both on technical and social domains, and speak to the relationship between them. His research topics have included the role of informal awareness in supporting coordination in collaborative systems, the relationship between 'place' and 'space' in information systems, and

methodological In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

questions about the use of

ethnographic Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

techniques in information systems design. At

UC Irvine UC may refer to: Education In the United States * University of California system * University of Charleston, West Virginia * University of Chicago, Illinois * University of Cincinnati, Ohio * Upsala College, East Orange, New Jersey (''defunct ...

, he is a professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and

Computer Sciences Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and ...

department, where he is a member of the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction (LUCI), and in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Arts Computation Engineering. In addition to his appointment in Informatics, he has courtesy appointments in

and

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

. From 2004 to 2006, he was associate director at the

California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. He co-directed the Center for Social Computing, one of

Corporation's US science and technology centers. Based at UC Irvine, this center involved academic partners from NYU, Cornell,

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

, and

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

. At UC Irvine, Dourish is also a member of: *The center for Cyber-Security and Privacy *The Center for Organizational Research *The Center for Unconventional Security Affairs *The center for

Biomedical Informatics Health informatics combines communications, information technology (IT), and health care to enhance patient care and is at the forefront of the medical technological revolution. It can be viewed as a branch of engineering and applied science. ...

*The advisory board of the Center for Ethnography and the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion Along with being a member of the aforementioned organizations, Dourish is a "co-conspirator" in the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction, a faculty associate of the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, and a co-coordinator of the People and Practices PAPR@UCI initiative.

Awards

In 2008, he was elected to the CHI Academy in recognition of his contributions to Human-Computer Interaction. Dourish won the Diana Forsythe Prize in 2002, and the IBM Faculty Award in 2006 under the American Medical Informatics Association. He was also awarded the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

CAREER Award in 2002. Dourish recently received a $201,000 grant to conduct research on people's online participation in social movements. Dourish recently received a $400,000 grant to research how the creative design process works when a team is split up through different cultures. Dourish also recently received a $247,000 grant to research how social media ties into death in real life. In 2015 he was named a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

"for contributions in social computing and human-computer interaction."

Research

Dourish mainly performs research in three specific areas of human-computer interaction (HCI). This includes work under ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), and Social Studies of Science and Technology. Dourish combines this technical research with sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies in an effort that he calls "embodied interaction." One of Dourish's most recognized contributions has been bringing sociological and phenomenological understandings of human activity to the design of technological systems. For example, his work on spatiality in virtual worlds and computer mediated communication has emphasized how people—in interaction with systems and with one another—evolve new understandings of space, media, and relationships. He also drew on Schutzian phenomenology to argue that tangible computing and social computing share an underlying emphasis on people as embodied, social actors. Emphasizing people as social and embodied points to the importance of how individuals are constituted through their interactions and movements in space with other people. This model is counterposed to models of the person in Human-Computer Interaction that focus exclusively on people's cognitive capabilities. Previous projects that Dourish has worked on include studies of privacy and spatiality. In this first study, Dourish emphasized privacy as "something that people do rather than something that people have". He was interested in how people rate information and activities based on privacy and risk. Through the studies, he sought knowledge of private practice as a social phenomenon. His second study involved the impact on shaping spatiality by information technologies. His goal was to study spatiality as a social and cultural production. Dourish's recent work has dealt with information technology use in trans-national and trans-cultural contexts. For example, his work on postcolonial computing has tried to unpack how assumptions about technology and knowledge drawn from Western or industrialized nation experiences create shape (or misshape) technology design. In the process, he has worked with indigenous Australian people, Chinese gamers, mobility between Thailand and the US, and Indian people regarding IT design. Dourish and his team were drawn by these new settings to dismiss the presumption that "everyone is or wants to be just like us". The new experience also helped to challenge current technological practices by showing the assumptions made in familiar settings. Dourish is interested and intrigued by opportunities presented through design as potential means of ethnographic engagement. He combines social theory, empirical examination, and technology design with varying emphasis throughout his projects.

Publications

Dourish has published three books. He published "Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction" (

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

) in 2001. This book explores the relationship between

phenomenological sociology Phenomenology within sociology (also social phenomenology or phenomenological sociology) examines the concept of social reality ( or "Lifeworld") as a product of intersubjectivity. Phenomenology analyses social reality in order to explain the ...

and

interaction design Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form (similar to other design fields), its main area of foc ...

, particularly with reference to physically embodied computation and

ubiquitous computing Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear seamlessly anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing imp ...

. He proposes Tangible computing and Social computing as two different aspects of the same program of investigation, named embodiment. His second book, "Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing," written in collaboration with Genevieve Bell, is an exploration of the social and cultural aspects of

, with a particular focus on the disciplinary and methodological issues that have shaped the ubiquitous computing research agenda. It was published by

in 2011.Press page for "Divining a Digital Future."
/ref> His third book, "The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information," explores the "material arrangements”Press page for "The Stuff of Bits."
/ref> of various digital objects—that is, how information is represented and interpreted. Through a series of case studies, featuring digital artifacts and practices such as emulation, spreadsheets, databases, and computer networks, he connects the representation of information to broader issues of human experience, touching on “questions of power, policy, and polity in the realm of the digital." The book was published by

in 2017. In addition to the three books, he has published conference proceedings, journal papers, conference papers, book chapters, technical reports, essay & position papers, editorial activities, and patents. A full list of his publications can be found a
Paul Dourish
Many of the patents that he holds involve document management.

Teaching

Paul Dourish is a professor of informatics, computer science, and anthropology at UC Irvine. Some classes Dourish teaches ar
Ubiquitous Computing and InteractionSocial Analysis of Computerization
an
Human-Computer Interaction
His Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction class focuses on how humans obtain information and interact using computers. Dourish's Socian Analysis of Computerization class focuses on how the internet, information, and technology affect our everyday lives. Finally, Dourish's Research in Computer-Human Interaction class examines the interactions between users and their devices and can be applied to either a person theoretically studying the field to write a dissertation or to a student wanting to apply these ideas to their own products.

Selected bibliography

* Dourish, P. 2001. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press. * Dourish, P. 2004. What We Talk About When We Talk About Context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1), 19–30. * Dourish, P. and Anderson, K. 2006. Collective Information Practice: Exploring Privacy and Security as Social and Cultural Phenomena. Human-Computer Interaction, 21(3), 319–342.