The Department wishes to congratulate advisor Lilly Irani (PI) and 4th year doctoral student Dorothy Howard (Co-PI) for their recent award, a NSF Science, Technology, and Society (STS), Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG). This award covers 2-years of research-related expenses for Dorothy’s doctoral dissertation on “Burnout: The Epistemologies of a Modern Condition.”
This two-year award supports Howard’s investigation on the social history of burnout. This research explores how organizations have built expertise to address burnout as a dimension of wellness and work culture. Howard’s qualitative case studies in health sciences and software reveal how burnout moves through different contexts and uses a situated practice approach to look at how these organizations research changes in workplace culture. Howard’s doctoral research supports the efforts of managers, administrators, and designers as they implement these organizational changes.
Howard’s ethnographic methods include participatory workshops on burnout and wellness that will hopefully show how burnout manifests in these institutional contexts and contributes to the broader field of occupational health.
Congratulations on this prestigious award, Dorothy Howard!