Research Projects

My research uses ethnographic and participatory design methods to understand how people use information and communication technologies for community formation and economic development in the rural Midwestern United States. I am more broadly interested in how rural places, their contemporary and historical problems, and the proposed future solutions, are envisioned as being essential to American economic and technological progress. Some of my current and former research projects are highlighted below. For most updated full list of publications, see my Google Scholar.

Current Projects

Understanding and Supporting Rural Community Adaptation to Workplace Automation (2026-present)

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is my newest work. Alongside my Co-PI, Dr. Tara Behrend, we will be studying how rural manufacturing and agriculture communities respond to workplace automation. For more information see the NSF website.

Redesigning Virtual Schools as Networks of Care and Solidarity (2023-present)

Through a Spencer Foundation grant, Dr. Anne Jonas and I have been conducting ethnographic and design research on the role of digital technology in the classroom in virtual and hybrid schools. In particular, we are interested in how students and teachers envision what digital technologies could look like that embody their needs and how they might respond to important structural issues facing schools and their communities. We have recently wrapped up focus groups with rural teachers to understand the impact of digital technology on their labor. Publications in this area include:

  • Jonas, A., De Jesús, A., & Hardy, J. 2026. “It’s Not a Daydreaming Center, it’s a School”: Exploring Conflicting Educational Purposes through Design Futures. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 10(2), CSCW024:1-CSCW024:31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3788060
  • Jonas, A., De Jesus, A., and Hardy, J. 2025. Student Agency and Punishment Logics in Imagined Future Classroom Technologies. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article 142, p. 1-13.

Using Game-Based Interventions to Address Rural Digital Infrastructure (2022-present)

This research, supported initially through a research gift from the Merit Network and subsequently by a United States Department of Agriculture subaward, uses design methods to understand experiences of infrastructural breakdown and support evaluation experiences of rural broadband taskforces in Michigan. Drawing from a year of ethnographic research in two regions of the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan with widespread digital connectivity issues, our research team developed an initial board game to facilitate rural community members sharing their experiences with infrastructural breakdown. Following this preliminary work, Cory Heald (a game design professor at MSU) was brought on to assist in the creation of a second board game, Connected Community. In this game, players take on the role of a leader of a rural community broadband taskforce and are tasked with addressing digital equity and broadband infrastructure issues in their communities. As of May 2026, Connected Community is completed and we will begin deploying it in the field in late 2026 to understand how game-based interventions can be used to
measure the self- and collective-efficacy of rural leaders to address digital equity issues in their communities. Publications in this area include:

  • Hardy, J., Gleason, M., and Battocchio, A.F. 2025. Playing with Rural Design: Design Probe Failures & Community Disconnections. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Communities & Technologies.

Rural Transformation in the 21st Century (2017-present)

I am engaged in a long-term ethnographic, design, and policy research investigating the promotion of innovation and high-tech entrepreneurship as key elements for contemporary rural economic and community development. I am concerned with how unique aspects of rural culture, natural resources, and geographic remoteness get transformed into assets that can be leveraged by a variety of actors in the name of technological advancement and post-industrial economic recovery. Through this work, I have collaborated with a variety of regional economic developers and civic leaders in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Publications in this area include:

  • Hardy, J. 2026. Legibility & Rural Development in the American High-Tech Economy. Information Technology for Development, 32(1), 311–332. https://doi.org/10.17705/1ITD.032114
  • Hardy, J. 2025. Rural Expertise & the Sewer. In M. Gugganig, K. Bronson, and V. Mirza (Eds.), The Smartification of Everything: Critical Analyses of a Ubiquitous Reality across Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. University of Toronto Press.
  • Hardy, J., Thebault-Spieker, J. 2024. A Turn to Assets in Community-Based Computing Research: Tradeoffs, Deficits, and Neoliberalism in Technological Development. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8, CSCW 1, 14:1-20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3637291
  • Hardy, J. 2024. Transforming the Rural Asset: Advancing Rural Place through Cultural Assets in the American High-Tech Economy. Community Development, 55(6), 823-841. https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2023.2301704
  • Su, N.M., Hardy, J., Vigil-Hayes, M., Veinot, T., and Comber, R. 2021. Performing Rurality with Computing. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 28(3), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461832
  • Hardy, J., Wyche, S., and Veinot. T. 2019. Rural HCI Research: Definitions, distinctions, methods, and opportunities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW 2019, 196:1-34. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359298

Past Projects

Social technology and information behavior in rural LGBTQ people (2014-2024)

For a decade, I studied the role of digital technologies and information among LGBTQ people living in the rural Midwestern United States. This research was incredibly varied, including interview studies with online dating app users, multi-year ethnographic projects embedded in rural queer communities, and participatory and speculative design work on the information ecosystems these groups inhabited and desired. Publications in this area include:

  • Jonas, A., Vargas, S., and Hardy, J. 2024. Better than Google: Information Activism for LGBTQ+ Young Adults in a Rural Community. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8, CSCW 2, 452:1-29.
  • Hardy, J., Geier, C., Vargas, S., Doll, R., and Howard, A. 2022. LGBTQ Futures and Participatory Design: Investigating Visibility, Community, and the Future of Future Workshops. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6, CSCW 2, 525:1-25.
  • Hardy, J. 2021. Queer Information Literacies: Social and Technological Circulation in the Rural Midwestern United States. Information, Communication & Society, 24(1), 102-117.
  • Hardy, J. and Lindtner, S. 2017. Constructing a Desiring User: Discourse, Rurality, and Design in Location-Based Social Networks. Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 13-25.

Technological Capacity Building in Non-Profit Community Farms (2022-2025)

I worked with Partridge Creek Farm (PCF), a non-profit community farm in Ishpeming, Michigan that promotes K-12 education and local food access in the Central Upper Peninsula. With the support of the Comprehensive Economic Recovery Initiative funded through the CARES Act, we purchased a set of agricultural sensors for the farm and are evaluating how PCF is adopting novel digital technology and the resulting data to serve their mission. Our goal was to develop recommendations for other community farms and small-scale agricultural operations to develop their own low-cost, low-scale sensor networks. This work was funded by MSU’s Center for Community & Economic Development. Publications in this area include:

  • Hardy, J. and Palmer, A. 2025. Promoting Digital Agriculture Adoption in Community-Based Agricultural Organizations. Journal of Extension, 63(1).