has been appointed Full Professor of Work, Technology, and Organization. She is a researcher at the KIN Center for Digital Innovation and a member of the AI@Work research group.
Sergeeva’s peers recognize her as the world-class expert on the qualitative scholarship of technology and work. Her core academic contribution is the introduction of an “embedded research paradigm” to the study of technology at work: while many studies investigate technologies, such as AI, through surveys, interviews, laboratory experiments, or critical reflections, Sergeeva's approach emphasizes a commitment to “being there” on the ground in organizations implementing AI over an extended period. Rooted in cultural anthropological methods, her work demonstrates that only through deep, longitudinal immersion can we achieve a truly grounded understanding of work transformation. A novel aspect of this paradigm is its focus on technology development as culture itself: while much scholarship on the “future of work” implicitly assumes a “grand force” of digitalization, portraying technology as an inevitable driver of societal progress, her ethnographies uniquely combine a focus on both technology design and its workplace use. This distinctive approach reveals how engineering design choices, aspirations, and values are inscribed into the technologies that shape our work lives, often at the expense of workers’ situated values. The ultimate significance of this paradigm is its rare combination of rigor and relevance: “being there” enables the production of rigorous, much-needed knowledge about technology and work, while also offering the potential to influence the trajectory of technology development, implementation, and use, ensuring its positive role in the future of work.
Sergeeva is a recipient of multiple best paper awards and nominations from Academy of Management and Association for Information Systems. She serves on the editorial board of Information Systems Research and acted as Associate Editor at two key conferences in the field: Academy of Management and International Conference for Information Systems, receiving several awards for her outstanding service. In 2022, she received a distinguished appointment of a Senior Editor at Organization Science, a premier journal in the domain.
The appointment to Full Professor would enable Sergeeva to continue these efforts at a new level, where her research contributions can achieve broader scale and impact, particularly in bridging the gap between beta sciences and the social sciences, both in research and education. Sergeeva’s ultimate ambition is to extend the knowledge generated from her studies on technology at work to other fields, such as engineering, computer science, technology development, and technology-related policymaking more broadly.
