Introduction

Kathryn (Kate) Ringland, PhD in Informatics from the University of California, Irvine, is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was previously a NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz. Her research interests include studying and designing playful and community-oriented technology for people with disabilities.

Kate is currently affiliated with the Computational Media Department at University of California, Santa Cruz where she leads the Misfit Lab. Her past affiliations include: ASSIST Lab at UC Santa Cruz, the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs) and the People, Information, and Technology Changing Health (PITCH) Lab at Northwestern University, as well as the Star Group in LUCI in the ICS School.

She is the recipient of Best Paper Awards and Nominations at ACM CHI, CSCW, Ubicomp, and ASSETS.

Kate can be reached at kringlan [at] ucsc [dot] edu.

Research

Kate’s research contributes to the larger understanding of how people with disabilities experience and interact within society. Her work largely centers on understanding, designing, and developing technology to help support people with disabilities. Specifically, Kate contributes to how we understand psychosocial disabilities, such as autism or depression, and how technology can support people with psychosocial disabilities.

Secondary interests include how psychosocial disability is impacted and influenced by people’s other identities and the communities they live in.

Teaching

With a focus on group discussion and critical thinking, Kate has taught courses in technology for health, assistive technology, and games. She has taught in classrooms at University of California Santa Cruz, Northwestern University, Chapman University, and University of California Irvine. Her priority in teaching is to create an inclusive accessible classroom where students engage in many different ways to learn and think about important questions of technology.

Kate is passionate about creating accessible science communication. She frequently blogs about her work and also lectures on technology for people with disabilities, supportive online communities, and games.

BTS in a group giving finger hears and thumbs up

ARMY!

I am currently conducting research in the ARMY community. Learn more here: BTS ARMY Community Research Page

I am leading a team of researchers to better understand the technological platforms that BTS and ARMY use to create their own special community. I am especially interested in how this impacts marginalized ARMY, such as disabled ARMY. We are looking to understand how playful online communities, such as fandoms, engage in forms of care and activism. In doing this, we hope to legitimize these communities as spaces for play and enjoyment, as well as care, relationship building, and civic engagement.

Stay tuned for survey and interview information coming soon!

Last Updated: June 3, 2022.