Jacob Hellman

Bio

I am the Lana H. Ferguson Lecturer in the Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS) at Stanford, where I teach classes about the values that get embedded in innovation and science. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at York University in Toronto. I have also lectured in Sociology and in Communication at the University of California, San Diego.

My research examines how financial technologies generate forms of social belonging, beyond their ostensibly economic function. My book manuscript is about the popularization of amateur venture capital (“angel”) investing. I have also published on Big Tech companies’ data center assets, as part of the project “From Entrepreneurship to Rentiership? The Changing Dynamics of Innovation in Technoscientific Capitalism,” funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada). My research has been published in Economy and Society, Science as Culture, and Historical and Social Research.

Prior to entering a PhD program in Communication at UC San Diego, I had a career in energy conservation insulating low-income housing.

Academic Appointments

• Lecturer, Science, Technology and Society