Diana Kurkovsky West

Education

PhD, Princeton University

MA, Williams College

BA, Middlebury College

About Me

Diana Kurkovsky West came to Auburn after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Science and Human Culture Program at Northwestern University. She was also formerly the director of the Science and Technology Studies (STS) Center at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. She holds a PhD from Princeton University and an MA from Williams College. 

Her research interests include the history of science and technology, Russian and Soviet history, and urban history and theory. She is presently completing a book manuscript titled CyberSovietica: Dreaming of Big Data in the Soviet Union, which contends that Soviet planners were the first to imagine a “smart” country of its kind. Besides the work on cybernetics, Kurkovsky West is interested in questions of quantification, infrastructure, innovation cultures, and history of patents and information. She has forthcoming publications in The Journal of Architecture and History of the Human Sciences, and has also published book chapters in From Russia With Code (Biagioli and Lepinay, eds, Duke University Press 2019) and The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia (McQuillen and Vaingurt, eds., Academic Studies Press 2018) and others. Kurkovsky West has taught courses in history of science and technology, including Technology and Society, an advanced undergraduate course titled From Cybernetics to Cyberwar, and several graduate-level courses in STS and urban history.

Research Interests

history of science and technology, Russian and Soviet history, urban history and theory