Joan Greenbaum (born October 7, 1942) is an American political economist, labor activist, and Professor Emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center (Environmental Psychology) and LaGuardia Community College (Computer Systems Information). She also taught and conducted research at Aarhus University (Computer Science) (1986–88; 1991–92; 2007), and the University of Oslo (Informatics) (1995–96). Her numerous books and articles focus on participatory design of technology information systems, technology and workplace organization, and gender and technology.
Personal life and education
Born to Harriet and Nathan Greenbaum in Bronx, NY, Greenbaum attended public schools in White Plains, NY. She earned a B.A. in economics at Penn State (1963) and a Ph.D. in Political Economy from Union Graduate School (1977), with coursework at the New School for Social Research and a scholarship from the Institute for Policy Studies. Greenbaum has four sons and several grandchildren.
Technology
As an undergraduate student, Greenbaum programmed one of the first computers, the IBM 650, a vacuum tube computer system, in binary code. Following college, she worked as a computer programmer at IBM at a time when few women worked in computer systems. Greenbaum was the first woman faculty member in the Computer Systems Information Department (then called Data Processing) at LaGuardia Community College shortly after it was founded as a cooperative educational institution, making higher education accessible to local factory works and other laborers (1973-2007). More recently, she was a fellow at the research institute AI Now (2019-2020)
Labor activism
Greenbaum is a longtime labor activist championing workers' rights and raising awareness of social justice issues. In the late 1960s-early 70s, she was an activist with Computer People for Peace, an organization of workers in the computer field who were against the War in Vietnam. She was active in early efforts to unionize computer workers, which she discussed in a 2019 interview with Logic magazine, and said:
"I believe everything starts with a single issue. You start with a single issue, and my issue was working conditions."
She is a member of the executive board of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union that represents more than 30,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York, and co-founded the Environmental Health and Safety Watchdogs. She was given the Unsung Hero Award at the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) Health and Safety Conference in 2013.
Participatory Design
Greenbaum's academic work has been most influential among scholars in the technology and design fields, specifically those working on participatory design of computer systems, which involves the active involvement of all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure the result meets their needs and is usable. She collaborated with scholars in Scandinavia, where the concept of cooperative design took root and who developed strategies and techniques for workers to influence the design and use of computer applications at the workplace. Also in the area of participatory design, Greenbaum's work has been applied to studies of museums and cultural heritage institutions. Dagny Stuedahl, a professor in media design who has written about participatory design methods in museums in Norway, has been influenced by Greenbaum's focus on the organizational context for participation and involvement in processes that is central for the innovations in heritage institutions.