Katreen is a Ph.D. student at the iSchool. Her work sits at the intersection of science and technology studies, economic geography, political economy of computing, organization studies, and she aspires to a practice of transdisciplinarity. Katreen is also a research assistant for Dr. Hamid Ekbia, working closely with the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs on issues of artificial intelligence and the future of work. Prior to her arrival at Syracuse University, Katreen attended Indiana University – Bloomington, where she earned an M.S. in Informatics in 2022, and a B.S. in Informatics and certificate in anthropology in 2019.
Katreen studies the dynamic relationships between organizations, the practices used to manage these relationships, and how relationships and practices impact the production of goods and the production of space. She pays particular attention to linkages, tensions, and interdependencies across different spatial and organizational scales. Her work examines inter-organizational dynamics and practices in regional, national, and global semiconductor industries. It does so by focusing on recent plans to transform the Central New York semiconductor industry as Micron Technology prepares to construct a new mega-fabrication facility in Clay, NY. These transformations require a diverse range of actors — firms, non-profits, government entities, educational institutions, and community stakeholders — to coordinate for purposes such as scaling up the local workforce, investing in R&D, developing and improving local infrastructure, and building up the regional capacity for end-to-end semiconductor manufacturing in New York State. Katreen uses a qualitative, mixed methods approach (semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation, surveys, and content analysis) which she complements with quantitative empirical data to understand this coordination and its impacts.
Her general research interests are: Regional and global development, global production networks, workforce development, inter-organizational studies, computer chip fabrication, artificial intelligence, industrial and technology policy
You can get in touch with Katreen via email (kboustan@syr.edu) or by connecting on LinkedIn.