Dr Shiv Issar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Krea University. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nazareth University in Rochester, NY. He specializes in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the intersections of gender, race, labor, new media, transnationalism, and the environment. His research follows drones, platforms, and artificial intelligence into the spaces where people learn, labor, and govern, raising questions about how these systems reorganize everyday life, communication, and public power. Grounded in STS and qualitative sociology, his work employs ethnographic, digital, and archival approaches to trace sociotechnical change across both Global North and South contexts.
Dr Issar’s scholarship has been published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction,Sociology Compass, the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, the American Sociological Association’s TRAILS Library, Teaching Sociology, and Science, Technology & Society. His research spans four domains: civilian drone cultures; the cultural and governing logics of social media platforms and algorithms; the genealogies and methods of STS; and game studies. Across these areas, he foregrounds the experiences of marginalized publics while building frameworks for more equitable and democratic technological futures.
In the classroom,Dr Issar treats technologies as lived infrastructures that students can interrogate and reimagine. His courses invite students to connect abstract theory with their everyday experiences—mapping the hidden labor behind digital platforms, analyzing media artifacts such as memes and films, and engaging in ethnographic exercises that reveal the social life of technologies.
Dr Issar is currently serving a three-year term as an elected member of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S, 2024–27), and has previously served as a board member of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). Outside academia, he enjoys hiking, biking, travel, cooking, and science fiction in games, film, and literature.