Prof Shiv Issar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Plaksha University. He specializes in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the intersections of gender, race, labor, new media, transnationalism, and the environment. His research follows drones, platforms, and artificial intelligence into the spaces where people learn, labor, and govern, raising questions about how these systems reorganize everyday life, communication, and public power. Grounded in STS and qualitative sociology, his work employs ethnographic, digital, and archival approaches to trace sociotechnical change across both Global North and South contexts.
Prior to joining Plaksha, Prof Issar held roles as an Assistant Professor at Krea University and at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York. Prof Issar's scholarship has been published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Sociology Compass, the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, the American Sociological Association's TRAILS Library, Teaching Sociology, and Science, Technology & Society. His doctoral dissertation, Drone Society: An Abductive Analysis of Civilian Drone Culture, received the Media Ecology Association's Harold A. Innis Award for Outstanding Thesis or Dissertation.
In the classroom, Prof Issar treats technologies as lived infrastructures that students can interrogate and reimagine. His courses invite students to connect abstract theory with their everyday experiences — mapping the hidden labor behind digital platforms, analyzing media artifacts such as memes and films, and engaging in ethnographic exercises that reveal the many different social dimensions of technologies.
Prof Issar is currently serving a three-year term as an elected member of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S, 2024–27) and a two-year term as Associate Board Member of Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies (2026–28). He has previously served as a board member of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), and is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI).
