Colette Perold
- Assistant Professor
- MEDIA STUDIES
Address
Armory 1B27
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Assistant Professor Colette Perold researches the relationship between media technologies, labor, and U.S. foreign policy, specifically the ways in which multinational IT companies have shaped U.S. foreign policy priorities in Latin America historically. Her book manuscript in progress, Computing in the Shadow of Empire: IBM, Development, and U.S. Policy in Brazil, 1917-1991 (under advance contract, Johns Hopkins University Press) analyzes IBM’s entry into Brazil, its rise to near-monopoly status, and its eventual expulsion from and reentry into Brazilian markets during the country's transition to democracy. Focusing on IBM’s relationship to U.S. imperialism and Brazilian developmentalism, the manuscript offers a prehistory to contemporary debates about digital sovereignty and the geopolitics of technological development. Perold’s work on labor history has been published in popular labor outlets, with scholarly articles forthcoming.
Perold's research has been funded by various sources including the Hagley Library and the Charles Babbage Institute, where she received the 2019-2020 Tomash Fellowship. Her article "IBM's World Citizens: Valentim Bouças and the Politics of IT Expansion in Authoritarian Brazil" won the 2021 Mahoney Prize for outstanding article in the history of computing and information technology from the Society for the History of Technology's Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS). She received the 2022-2023 Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and a 2024-2025 NEH Fellowship.
Perold earned her PhD from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. She is on the organizing committee of SIGCIS’s annual conference, and is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.