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Emma Schmidt

Emma Schmidt headshot. A young woman with short brown hair, wearing thin-framed round glasses, dangling silver earrings, and a black sleeveless turtleneck shirt against a gray background. She is smiling slightly.
Email
eschmid8@nd.edu

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Biography

Emma Schmidt is a PhD Candidate in political theory and international relations. Her dissertation compares critiques of technology in the 20 th century traditions of phenomenology and critical theory, placing Hannah Arendt in dialogue with her mentor, Martin Heidegger, and her contemporaries in the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas and Hebert Marcuse. Presenting Arendt’s uniquely political critique of modernity as amenable to considerations of contemporary democratic politics, Emma applies her thinking about science and technology to contemporary questions about artificial intelligence, algoracy (rule by algorithm), and the digital public sphere.

Emma received a BA in Politics and Government from the University of Puget Sound in 2018 and an MA in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame in 2023. Her written work has appeared in the Review of Politics and Applied Research in Quality of Life, and she has presented at numerous conferences. Emma is currently a graduate fellow at the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab.

Areas of Interest

Technology, Democratic Theory, Hannah Arendt