Amina Abdu
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI),
where I am advised by Abigail Jacobs, and an affiliate researcher at the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC).
My research examines how computing practices and expertise shape public policy and its implementation in the
United States. I am an interdisciplinary social scientist, drawing from critical algorithm studies, organizational theory, administrative law, and science and technology studies (STS). Methodologically, my work employs qualitative analysis of scientific discourses across academia, industry, and government. You can find my CV here.
More Info
+ My Interests
My research interests center around computing practices and technical expertise in policy-relevant settings, including:
- quantitiatve social science research
- government agencies
- advocacy organizations and public interest technology organizations
- technology companies
In particular, I'm thinking about how and when policy outcomes are measured, and the factors that mediate this process— including values, power, institutions, and law.
I'm also interested in datafication and quantification in policy-making and public administration. Within this area, my work explores state data collection practices, government procurement of algorithmic technologies, and the rise of "evidence-based policy" in academic public policy. I am currently interested in how various groups use algorithmic technologies to gain legitimacy in policy spaces and how this in turn reshapes the types of knowledge, expertise, and values that are seen as a legitimate basis for policy interventions.
Selected work in progress
- Everyday Legitimacy Practices and the Algorithmic Turn in the Administrative State. [Preprint on SSRN]
Amina A. Abdu & Abigail Z. Jacobs. Presented at Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2024.
- Ethical Closure Problems in Formalizing Technologies.
Amina A. Abdu, Jeremy Seeman & Abigail Z. Jacobs. Presented at Privacy and Public Policy Conference 2024.
- AI Evaluations and the Standards Metaphor.
Amina A. Abdu & Abigail Z. Jacobs. Forthcoming at Governing Data Symposium, Privacy Law Scholars Conference, and Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).
Publications
- Essential Work, Invisible Workers: The Role of Digital Curation in COVID-19 Open Science.
Irene V. Pasquetto, Amina A. Abdu, & Natascha Chtena. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST). 2024.
- Algorithmic Transparency and Participation through the Handoff Lens: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Adoption of Differential Privacy.
[arXiv]
Amina A. Abdu, Lauren M. Chambers, Deirdre K. Mulligan & Abigail Z. Jacobs. ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT). 2024.
Previously presented at Data (Re)Makes the World Conference 2023 and Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2023.
- Public Administration.
Amina Abdu & Abigail Jacobs. In Burrell, Jenna, Ranjit Singh, and Patrick Davison (eds.), Keywords on the Datafied State. Data & Society. 2024.
- An Empirical Analysis of Racial Categories in the Algorithmic Fairness Literature. [arXiv, popular writeup]
Amina A. Abdu, Irene V. Pasquetto & Abigail Z. Jacobs. ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT). 2023.
Policy Writing
+ In a previous life...
I received my B.A. in mathematics and economics from Pomona College in Claremont, CA.
After graduating, I spent some time in academia doing empirical health economics research at the Harvard Kennedy School and then in tech policy working on antitrust advocacy at the Consumer Federation of America.
These experiences shaped my current interest in the role of computation in both social science scholarship and governance.
Recent Updates
- May 2025 - Excited to discuss our work-in-progress "AI Evaluations and the Standards Metaphor" at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference in Los Angeles, CA (joint work with Abigail Jacobs).
- March 2025 - I will be talking about AI Evaluations at the Governing Data Symposium in New Haven, CT (joint work with Abigail Jacobs).
- January 2025 - I will be (virtually) attending the Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium to present our work on participation during the Census Bureau's adoption of differential privacy. Stop by and say hi!
- November 2024 - New paper! "Essential Work, Invisible Workers: The Role of Digital Curation in COVID-19 Open Science" is out now in JASIST (joint work with Irene Pasquetto and Natascha Chtena).
- October 2024 - I was profiled for Faces of UMSI. Read about my Ph.D. research and journey. Huge thanks to Noor Hindi for the writeup and Jeff Smith for the photos!
- September 2024 - I will be at the Privacy and Public Policy Conference in Washington, DC to discuss ongoing work about legitimacy strategies in formal privacy-enhancing technologies (joint work with Jeremy Seeman and Abigail Jacobs).
- August 2024 - I will be at the OpenDP Community Meeting in Boston, MA to talk about law, policy, and the responsible deployment of differential privacy.
- + Older updates
- June 2024 - I will be a panelist at a roundtable on the Datafied State at the Annual Meeting of the Law & Society Association with Jennifer Raso, Jamie Duncan, Isabelle Mendes, and Ranjit Singh.
- June 2024 - I'm excited to present our paper "Algorithmic Transparency and Participation through the Handoff Lens: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Adoption of Differential Privacy" at FAccT 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (joint work with Lauren Chambers, Deirdre Mulligan, and Abigail Jacobs).
- May 2024 - Excited to discuss our work "Legitimacy from the Administrative State to the Algorithmic State" at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) in Washington, DC (joint work with Abigail Jacobs).
- April 2024 - Data and Society's Keywords of the Datafied State collection is out! Abigail Jacobs and I contributed a piece on Public Administration (edited by Jenna Burrell, Patrick Davison, and Ranjit Singh).
- February 2024 - I gave a talk about racial classification practices in algorithmic fairness resarch at Northeastern's Network Science Institute (NetSI) in Boston, MA.
- August 2023 - I successfully defended my field prelim about quantification and legitimacy in U.S. public administration. I am now a Ph.D. candidate!
- July 2023 - I am participating in a workshop on Sociotechnical Approaches to Measurement and Validation for Safety in AI hosted by Northwestern's Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence (CASMI) in Evanston, IL.
- June 2023 - I am excited to present our work on the adoption of racial categories in algorithmic fairness research at FAccT in Chicago, IL (joint with Irene Pasquetto & Abigail Jacobs). This is my first paper :-)
- June 2023 - We will be presenting our work on the Census Bureau's adoption of differential privacy at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) in Boulder, CO (joint with Lauren Chambers, Abigail Jacobs & Deirdre Mulligan).
- May 2023 - I am participating in a workshop on Methods for Inclusivity in Data Collection hosted by Partnership on AI. See the resulting whitepaper here!
- March 2023 - I am attending the Data (Re)Makes the World Conference in New Haven, CT. We will be presenting work on the Census Bureau's implementation of differential privacy (joint work with Lauren Chambers, Abigail Jacobs & Deirdre Mulligan).
- December 2022 - February 2023 - I am excited to join the Federation of American Scientists and Kapor Center's Racial Equity in Tech Policy Accelerator.
- November 2022 - I am participating in CSCW's Critical Public Interest Tech Workshop.
- November 2022 - I am giving a guest lecture in SI 110: Introduction to Information about data science methods and ethics.
- June 2022 - I am attending the Doctoral Consortium at FAccT in Seoul, SK.
- November 2021/February 2022 - I am participating (virtually) in the Everyday Misinformation workshop at UIUC.
- August 2021 - I started my Ph.D. at UMSI!
