Mary L. Gray is Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She also maintains a faculty position in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University. Mary, an anthropologist and media scholar by training, focuses on how everyday uses of technologies transform people’s lives.
Mary is the author, with computer scientist Siddharth Suri, of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2019. It was named a Financial Times’ Critic’s Pick and awarded the McGannon Center for Communication Research Book Prize in 2019. The book has been translated into Korean and Chinese.
Her other books include In Your Face: Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth, Queering the Countryside: New Directions in Rural Queer Studies, a 2016 Choice Academic Title co-edited with Colin Johnson and Brian Gilley, and Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America, which looked at how young people in rural Southeast Appalachia use media to negotiate their sexual and gender identities, local belonging, and connections to broader, imagined queer communities. The book won the American Anthropological Association's Ruth Benedict Prize and the American Sociological Association's Sexualities Studies Book Award in 2009.
Mary chairs the Microsoft Research Ethics Review Program—the only federally-registered review board of its kind in Tech. She is recognized as a leading expert in the emerging field of AI and ethics, particularly research at the intersections of computer and social sciences. She sits on the editorial boards of Cultural Anthropology, Television and New Media, the International Journal of Communication, and Social Media + Society. Mary’s research has been covered by popular press venues, including The Guardian, El Pais, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Nature, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Forbes Magazine. She served on the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association and was the Program Chair for the Association’s 113th Annual Meeting. Mary currently sits on several boards, including the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisors, Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R), and Stanford University’s One-Hundred-Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) Standing Committee, commissioned to reflect on the future of AI and recommend directions for its policy implications.
