Janis is a postdoc researcher at the HCI research group of TU Wien. She obtained her doctoral degree in Digital Civics at Open Lab (Newcastle University) and holds a MSc in Media Informatics and previously worked in the IT-department of an Austrian governmental institution and as a consultant for a software company.
Janis has her research interests in productive creative practices of non-expert technology users and their ways of meaning-making with digital tools. In her dissertation she explored the sociomaterial practices of “makers-in-the-making”: people with disabilities using 3D-printers for ’empowering hacks’; charity workers, service users and quilters creating a touch-interactive e-textile blanket; organisers and users of a Men Shed combining traditional craft skills with new digital technologies. After that she explored the hidden technological labour of low-wage service workers in female-dominated professions (i.e. retail employees and mobile care workers). In all this work she has openly challenged the “non-technical” framing of non-expert users by critically highlighting counter-perspectives on digital transformation processes and issues of social justice with the design and use of digital tools. She has a particular interest in experimenting with participatory and creative research methods and how co-design can be used as a means to establish healthy give-and-take-relationships between those researching and those researched.