Jean Hardy

Assistant Professor Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Jean Hardy's primary research focus is on the role of high-tech entrepreneurship and technological innovation.

Contact

Michigan State University

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Biography

Jean Hardy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media & Information. His primary research focus is on the role of high-tech entrepreneurship and technological innovation in rural economic and community development. He also does community-based participatory design research with rural LGBTQ people to understand technology use in low-resource settings. Hardy’s formative work in rural computing has been published in prestigious venues for information and computer science, such as Information, Communication, & Society and the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, including winning a Best Provocation award at the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems in 2019. Hardy regularly collaborates with civic leaders and economic developers throughout rural Michigan on topics related to the future of rural development, and has been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio, Buzzfeed News, and Bloomberg. He holds a Doctorate and Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan School of Information, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Theory from the University of Washington.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Science and technology studies
LGBTQ Studies
Rural Computing
Community and Economic Development
Human-Computer Interaction

Accomplishments

ComArtSci Research & Creative Incubator & Accelerator Award

2022

Best Provocation Award

2019

ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems

Award for Impact in Gender Diversity in Information & Technology

2018

School of Information, University of Michigan

Education

University of Michigan School of Information

Ph.D.

Information

2020

University of Michigan School of Information

M.S.

Information

2015

University of Washington

B.A.

English Literature and Theory

2013

Affiliations

  • Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction
  • Society for the Social Studies of Science
  • Rural Sociological Society
  • American Sociological Association

News

There is a good reason not to support the Guardian

The Guardian  online

2021-09-18

Many travelers faced criticism last year for recklessly visiting locations overwhelmed by Covid-19. This pattern of urban elites descending upon rural communities led to what Michigan State University professor Jean Hardy calls “disaster gentrification”: While outdoor destinations are presented as a place of “escape”, an influx of visitors may compound crises for local communities.

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The State of Michigan Just Launched a Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Map. But How Do We Actually Get Internet to People?

The Gander  online

2020-06-23

Jean Hardy is an incoming assistant professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Media and Information. He said the state’s map of free Wi-Fi hotspots, even coupled with the few grants awarded to Michigan providers aimed at expanding broadband access to unserved rural areas, barely scratches the surface of what it would take to get workable internet access to folks currently living without it.

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This Pandemic Is Not Your Vacation

BuzzFeed News  online

2020-03-31

“The relationship between full-time residents and part-timers is already at a breaking point,” Jean Hardy, who’s currently finishing his doctoral degree in rural technology and economic development at the University of Michigan, told me. “There is an intense wealth gap that’s only going to be reinforced and exacerbated. And the perceived urban/rural divide is only going to get worse in that the continued reliance on rural areas as a place of respite is only going to get worse.”

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Event Appearances

Rural Tech Peripheries: Urban-Rural Economic Relations and the High-Tech Revitalization of Rural America

2023 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association  

Asset Maps and the Digitization of Rural Opportunity

2023 Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society  

Better than Google: Information Activism for LGBTQ+ Young Adults in a Rural Community

2023 Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society  

Research Grants

Redesigning Virtual Schools as Networks of Care and Solidarity

Spencer Foundation

2023

High-Tech Development Projects and the Future of Rural Michigan

Michigan Applied Public Policy Research Grant

2023

Human-Centered Infrastructure Design and the Future of Rural Digital Connectivity

Research Gift from Merit Network

2022

Journal Articles

LGBTQ Futures and Participatory Design: Investigating Visibility, Community, and the Future of Future Workshops

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

2022

This paper presents the findings from a series of participatory design workshops with LGBTQ people living in the rural Midwestern United States. Using future workshops as a method, we seek to understand contemporary problems facing rural LGBTQ people and leverage design exercises to facilitate community members to come up with creative solutions. What we find are people grappling with the complexities of visibility, safety, and resource access in their rural communities; people who wanted to be able to use and create sociotechnical solutions that could help them navigate these complexities.

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Urban Flight and Rural Rights in a Pandemic: Exploring Narratives of Place, Displacement, and “the Right to Be Rural” in the Context of COVID-19

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many preexisting challenges facing rural communities and brought tensions in rural–urban relations closer to the surface. This article offers an explorative contribution to discussions in critical geography by comparing media narratives surrounding urban flight to rural places during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Introduction: Performing Rurality with Computing

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

2021

From the recognition that computing users are socially and culturally situated in space and place to the contemporary third (and beyond) waves of human–computer interaction (HCI) research that recognize the ubiquity of technology and its relationship with context, identity, and subject position, the location of computing has long been a concern of HCI and its related disciplines.

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