Ellen Simpson is a third-year PhD student working with Bryan Semaan. She is interested in human-computer interaction, social computing and social movements. Her research is focused on how platforms disrupt routine use of their space, and how users, in turn, push back against the platform through small acts of disruption. Ellen earned an MSc in Media Power and Public Affairs at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Vermont. Ellen completed her first two years of her doctoral program at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies before coming to the University of Colorado. Outside of academia, Ellen has written three novels and helped to create and write a popular webseries that ran for the requisite three seasons and a movie. She enjoys hiking, rock climbing, watercolor painting and crosswords.