Daniel Mwesigwa

Hi there! I’m Daniel, a PhD student in Information Science at Cornell University, lucky to be co-advised by Steven J. Jackson and Chris Csikszentmihalyi. My research broadly studies the design and governance of sociotechnical AI systems, as well as the benefits and costs these systems produce. Using lenses from social informatics, machine learning, and anthropology, my PhD dissertation work examines the making of financial infrastructures in the global majority world and their policy implications on social and economic life. My research also centers moral values and their role in structuring expert and ordinary practice in different spheres of life. I’ve has previously worked as a technology researcher and policy analyst, and am a research affiliate of CIPESA, a leading technology policy think tank in Africa. I was previously an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard from 2020 to 2024.

Publications

Conferences

CSCW  ’26
To Tango or to Disentangle? Making Ethnography Public in the Digital Age
Daniel Mwesigwa, Cyan DeVeaux, Palashi Vaghela
CHI  ’26
Risk, Data, Alignment: Making Credit Scoring Work in Kenya
Daniel Mwesigwa, Steven J. Jackson, Christopher Csikszentmihalyi
CHI  ’24
Air/time Travel: Rethinking Appropriation in Global HCI and Futures of Electronic Exchange
Daniel Mwesigwa, Christopher Csikszentmihalyi

Book Chapters

Forthcoming  ’26
Exchange, obligation, accountability: Moral orders of technology repair in Kampala, Uganda
Daniel Mwesigwa, Steven J. Jackson
Stanford U Press  ’25
From Threat to Advocacy
Lisa Garbe, Daniel Mwesigwa, Toussaint Nothias

Workshop & Short Papers

DL Indaba  ’25
Against ‘softmaxing’ culture
Daniel Mwesigwa
CHI EA  ’25
The (Un)making of Data Subjects in Digital Credit Repair Practice
Daniel Mwesigwa

Posts