Dr. Maria Gretzky
I am a sociologist and anthropologist studying the intersections of emotions, technology, and power, primarily in higher education and finance. My work draws on the sociology of emotions, science and technology studies, and critical scholarship on datafication and digital capitalism.
My current research project develops the concept of "Emotionalized Algorithms": the idea that emotions are not only objects of algorithmic measurement and analysis, but also organizing principles in how algorithmic systems are imagined and designed. I examine how emotional concepts such as care and empathy are translated into design principles, who takes part in defining these categories, and what understandings of knowledge and social relations these systems help produce.
The project spans three empirical arenas: educational technologies, financial technologies, and the public discourse of leaders in the artificial intelligence industry. In educational technology, I examine how concern for students becomes intertwined with practices of digital monitoring and evaluation, and how students experience and negotiate these arrangements. In financial technology, I study automated investment platforms, focusing on robo-advisors that offer socially responsible or environmentally oriented investment options. In the third arena, I analyze how AI industry leaders invoke care, concern, empathy, and therapeutic relationships in their visions of human–AI relations.
Taken together, these arenas allow me to examine Emotionalized Algorithms at different levels of analysis, from technological visions and development processes to everyday user practices, and to trace how emotional ideas are translated and reshaped as they move across institutional and professional contexts.
I completed my PhD at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2025 as an Ariane de Rothschild Fellow. My dissertation explored the digitalization of higher education in the context of emotional and academic capitalism. Drawing on participant observation in a training program for digital learning developers and ethnographic research at an Israeli university undergoing digitalization, I examined how educational technologies reshape teaching, academic authority, and knowledge production. The study showed how algorithmic monitoring and control can be framed as care and concern for students, a finding that lays the foundation for my current research.
Another strand of my research focuses on artificial intelligence and the production of academic knowledge. My work on the "algorithmic author" examines how large language models blur the boundaries between human and machine authorship, raising questions about scholarly expertise and academic subjectivity.
Publications
Published peer-reviewed articles
- Gretzky, Maria. and Lerner, Julia. (2021). Students of Academic Capitalism: Emotional Dimensions in the Commercialization of Higher Education. Sociological Research Online, 26(1), 205-221. https://doi.org/10.1177/1360780420968117
- Winner of the 2022 SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence, awarded by the British Sociological Association and SAGE.
- Gretzky, Maria. (2024). The Rise of the Algorithmic Author? A Critical Analysis of Large Language Models in Higher Education. Digital Culture & Education, 15(2), 84-97. https://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-152
- Gretzky, Maria., & Dishon, G. (2025). Algorithmic-authors in academia: blurring the boundaries of human and machine knowledge production. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2025.2452196
- Gretzky, Maria. (2021). Black Screens: The Transition to Online Learning in the Higher Education System: A Look through the Camera Lens. Journal of Israeli Sociology. 21(2), 16-23. (In Hebrew. Link).
Books and Book Chapters
- Gretzky, Maria. (2021). Privacy Discourse in the Academic realm. Ram, U., Svirsky, S. and Berkowitz, N. (eds.) Sociological lexicon for Corona. Tel Aviv: Adva Center. (In Hebrew).
- Gretzky, Maria. (2022). An Autoethnographic Study of First-Generation Higher Education Scholars. Ron, S., Gigi, M. and Razi, T. (eds.). First Generation of Higher Education: Experiences, Insights, Actions. Tel Avia: Pardes. (In Hebrew).
- Heilbrunn, Sybille., Gretzky, Maria., and Tzur, Zohar. (2021). kaleidoscope of the Others. Kibbutz Kinneret: Kinneret academic college. ISBN: 978-965-599-720 (In Hebrew).
Under Review
- Gretzky, Maria. (Under Review). Supervised Autonomy: Caring Surveillance In Digital Higher Education.