Rate My Professor Sarah Florini

Sarah Florini is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she also serves as Associate Director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics and Director of the Digital Humanities Certificate. She joined the ASU faculty in 2016 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021. Florini previously held positions as Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University from 2014 to 2016 and as an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2012 to 2014. She earned a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from Indiana University in 2012, along with a Pedagogy Certificate, and an M.A. in Musicology from Indiana University in 2006.

Florini’s research centers on technology, social media, technology ethics, digital ethnography, and Black digital culture, with pioneering contributions to the study of Black Twitter and Black podcasting. Her 2019 book, Beyond Hashtags: Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks, published by New York University Press, examines multi-media cross-platform networks of Black American content creators and social media users from 2010 to 2016. She is the principal investigator on a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded project exploring algorithmic folk theories among TikTok content creators from historically marginalized groups. Florini co-chairs the AI and Ethics Work Group at the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics and has led initiatives including a white paper on AI and higher education as well as responsible AI curriculum development in partnership with the National Humanities Center and Google Education. Her additional roles include affiliations with ASU’s Social Technologies/Critical Data Studies and the Critical Media Studies Research Cluster. Florini has received grants such as the NEH Dangers and Opportunities of Technology award and an Institute for Humanities Research Publication Development Grant, and she has delivered numerous invited talks and conference presentations on topics including Black digital networks, podcasting, and technology ethics.