anne lee steele

I’m a researcher and writer based in the United Kingdom. (Schedule a chat here!)

Most of what I do aims to understand and support the people & processes behind our digital lives (think: open source infrastructure, extractive industries, and supply chains) and the political processes they feed into. I approach most situations as an ethnographer first, and as a community-builder second.

Currently, I am the community manager for The Turing Way, based at the Alan Turing Institute, where I am stewarding an open source, community-driven resource for reproducible data science.

Previously, I was a mentor for Open Life Science, cohort #5. I was also an Early Career Fellow at the Internet Society, where I investigated low earth orbit (LEO) satellite supply chains, and was a co-curator of The Re:source Project, which was incubated at Wikimedia Deutchland’s Unlock Accelerator.

Most recently, I completed my MA at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where I learned about open geospatial data and humanitarian mapping practices on OpenStreetMap with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. From 2020-2021, I was a Reproducible Research Fellow at the Open Knowledge Foundation. I remain associated with the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, more specifically with the Transparency Lab.

Before moving to Switzerland, I researched conservation in Bhutan, co-led student expeditions in Nepal, and coded data visualizations for a Washington DC think tank. As an undergraduate at Columbia University, I studied global cities and natural resource conflict. I also designed media for different organizations in New York City, and organized a technology-arts festival in New Zealand. While I grew up in the shadow of the oil industry in Texas, I was born in Chicago, and mostly raised in a big blue van – and on big bowls of miyeok-guk (미역국).

When I’m not on a computer, I’m usually outside – recording soundscapes, chasing waves to surf or finding mountains to climb.