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Volunteer
Hannah Pullen-Blasnik
Hannah Pullen-Blasnik is a Ph.D. Student and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University

Hannah Pullen-Blasnik is a Ph.D. Student and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. She is also a Graduate Research Fellow at the Columbia Justice Lab on the Pennsylvania Solitary Study and the Rikers Island Longitudinal Study. Her primary research interests include computational social science, science and technology, social movements, political economy, and urban studies.

Drawing from her experience as a Senior Data Scientist, Hannah is currently working on research projects that aim to make algorithmic tools more transparent and build community control over their consequences. One project investigates the biases and impact of prison intake risk assessment scores on incarceration, solitary confinement, and parole decisions. Another investigates human decision-making and interpretation of algorithmic results in probabilistic DNA profiling. She is also developing projects on the appropriation of Black Lives Matter by nonprofits and corporations during Covid-19, and transformations in the ideological state space of Black liberation organizing over the past 50 years.

Hannah is the coordinator for the Racial Capitalism Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference and the Co-Coordinator for the Sociology of Algorithms Workshop at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. She volunteers with Data for Black Lives to project manage a research team on algorithmic and technological surveillance to inform social policy.