Rosemary Steup

I am an Advancing Future Faculty Development Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University. Through my research, I advocate and design for a more caring world—one in which people can do meaningful work without sacrificing their mental, physical, or financial well-being. I study how narratives about technology and work become encoded in software design and how both of these things affect workers' pursuit of sustainable work-lives.I earned my Ph.D. in Informatics from Indiana University, where I was advised by Norman Su and Nathan Ensmenger. I am affiliated with the Labor Tech Research Network. At Lehigh, I am the former Treasurer and current President of the Lehigh Postdoctoral Association.

Research projects

Temporal autonomy in platform-mediated home care

Labor platforms are increasingly popular, not only for things like transportation, food delivery, and knowledge work, but also for caring professions like therapy, childcare, and in-home elder care. Platforms promise care workers the autonomy to choose their clients and create work schedules that fit their lives—but these promises play out in many different ways, not all of which are good for workers. My research explores the complex power dynamics among home care workers, clients, and platforms in order to understand how the design and regulation of labor platforms can support home care workers' temporal autonomy.Related publications:

  • Steup, R., & Jung, H.-T. (2025). A Relationship-Centered Perspective On Home Care Work. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., 9(7), CSCW272:1-CSCW272:23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757453

Resistance to generative AI

Narratives about the inevitability of AI are powerful and ubiquitous. We are told that AI is going to revolutionize every kind of work. Companies, institutions, and governments are investing heavily in AI, and individuals feel that they must embrace it or be left behind. In this moment of AI hype, it is important to discuss the sort of work futures we do and do not want, rather than let a few disproportionately powerful actors decide what role AI will play in work. This line of my research asks how academics (as educators, researchers, workers, and people) can resist inevitability narratives and make intentional choices about whether and how to adopt AI.Related publications:

  • Baumer, E. P. S., Cha, I., Khovanskaya, V., Steup, R., Vertesi, J., & Wong, R. Y. (2025). Exploring Resistance and Other Oppositional Responses to AI. Companion Publication of the 2025 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 156–160. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715070.3748295

The future of farming

Farming is contested terrain. Agriculture is the target of many “data-driven” or “AI-powered” products that aim to make farms more efficient in service of feeding a growing world population and meeting sustainability targets. At the same time, there are people trying to transform farming in different ways—people who believe what the world needs is not more agricultural production, but a more sustainable food system based on regenerative agriculture practices and local distribution. I studied how people in these different camps promote their visions for the future of farming, and how individuals blend farm work and tech work to create sustainable work-lives.Related publications:

  • Steup, R., Dombrowski, L., & Su, N. M. (2019). Feeding the World with Data: Visions of Data-Driven Farming. Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 1503–1515. https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3322382

  • Steup, R., Santhanam, A., Logan, M., Dombrowski, L., & Su, N. M. (2018). Growing Tiny Publics: Small Farmers’ Social Movement Strategies. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(CSCW), 165:1-165:24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274434

  • Steup, R., White, P., Dombrowski, L., & Su, N. M. (2022). “A Reasonable Life”: Rhythmic Attunement and Sustainable Work at the Intersection of Farming and Knowledge Work. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 476:1-476:22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555577

Teaching

Lehigh University, P.C. Rossin College of Engineering & Applied Science

  • DSCI 451: Data Science Ethics (Fall 2024, Fall 2025)

  • CSE 252: Computers, the Internet, and Society (Spring 2024)


Indiana University Bloomington, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering

  • INFO-I453: Computer and Information Ethics (Fall 2022, Spring 2023)