Catherine Griffiths

Catherine Griffiths is a designer and researcher exploring the politics of machine learning in society. She is an Assistant Professor teaching in the Computational Design Practices program at Columbia GSAPP. Griffiths views algorithms as contemporary sites of struggle and studies their impact on labor operating across different scales, including cities, workplaces, and within the home. She investigates a post-AI human rights landscape that redefines labor relations, gender politics, algorithmic governance, and the rights to the city.

Her creative research practice intersects critical AI studies, social documentary, and algorithmic visualization, making palpable the invisible computational forces that shape power and structure social systems. She creates simulations, short films, video installations, and critical software pieces to reveal and contest the normative logics of machine learning algorithms and think through new counter-algorithmic imaginaries.

Her work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at Geidei University in Tokyo, and the National Etruscan Museum in Rome. Recent publications include book chapters in Design and Science and Engaging the Margins: Experimental Practices in Interdisciplinary Art, as well as articles in Prospectives Journal and Gradient Journal. In 2024, she won a BRAID Responsible AI research grant from UK Research and Innovation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, in collaboration with the University of Bournemouth, UK. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice from the University of Southern California, an M.Arch from The Bartlett, University College London, and a B.A. from Camberwell College, University of the Arts London. Prior to joining GSAPP, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan.