Emma Schmidt
Fields of Study: Political Theory, International Relations
Areas of Interest: Technology, Empathy, Affective Rhetoric, Pluralism
Emma Schmidt is a third-year PhD student studying political theory and international relations. She received her BA in Politics and Government from the University of Puget Sound in 2018, having written her senior thesis on the panoptic potential of unmanned aerial vehicles and data collection technology. Emma’s current research interests include the impact of social media on pluralistic politics as well as narratives of techno-utopia/dystopia, and particularly the dialectic relationship between these two visions of technology articulated by theorists of the Frankfurt School. Her work incorporates science fiction as a speculative landscape for exploring normative questions about rights and just governance.