Department and Campus Commencement Information

The 2026 Sociology Commencement speaker will be Dr. Alex Hanna, a writer and a sociologist of technology, labor, inequality, and social movements whose academic and public-facing work can be found in our discipline's top journals, blogs, op-eds, policy briefs, and in your neighborhood book store. 

 

Dr. Hanna is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Her work examines how new computational technologies--such as AI and machine learning--exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality through their data practices and effects on labor. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

With Emily M. Bender, Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. They also run the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype on their livestream and podcast. She has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Socius, Sociological Science, Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS.

Dr. Hanna has been a VCCA Fellow and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. She is also recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany's Queer 50 (2021, 2024) List and Business Insider's AI Power List, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.

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Campuswide Commencement Information