Janet Abbate

Janet Abbate

Janet Abbate is Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech and Co-director of the STS graduate program in Northern Virginia. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has focused on the history, culture, and policy of computing. She authored the first scholarly history of the Internet, Inventing the Internet (1999). Her 2012 book Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Participation in Computing explores how gender has shaped computing and how the experiences of female software pioneers can inform current efforts to broaden participation in science and technology. Her current research investigates the history and social significance of computer science as an intellectual discipline.