Mapping Risk Work and Designing Technologies to Support it in CSCW Research

October 19th (Sunday), 2025 | Bergen, Norway

This workshop brings together CSCW scholars of various domains, such as medicine and healthcare, disaster planning, and public safety, to consider different dimensions of risk work and their implications on computing. Risk work encompasses the practices through which workers assess, manage, and mitigate potential harms in situations framed by uncertainty (Horlick-Jones, 2005; Gale et al., 2016). In the face of a pervasive rhetoric of crisis, risk work is expanding and evolving as workers and laypeople are increasingly charged with preventing, predicting, and communicating risks (de Graaff et al., 2021). The changing landscape of risk work is coupled with expanding technical infrastructure that shapes communication, determines information sharing, and includes technologies of data collection and prediction. In this workshop, we aim to examine the challenges and opportunities in designing computing systems that support risk work in order to develop a research agenda for studying the future of risk work. Participants will come ready to present on case studies of risk work. We will then engage in collaborative mapping exercises and design practices to identify both the potential and pitfalls of technologies to support risk work. The workshop will culminate in a shared research agenda and design strategies for the future of computing in risk work contexts.

Our workshop proposal can be found here.

CFP & Important Dates

If you are interested in attending the Mapping Risk Work Workshop at CSCW 2025, please submit a 2-3 page position paper or visual materials that detail one or more of the followings, through the SUBMIT link below:

  • Strong cases that show risk work problems and their applications.
  • Theoretical, methodological, or empirical provocations about risk work research.
  • Socio-technical solutions that address particular aspects of risk work issues.
  • New application domains that could be studied through risk work lens.

The submission for this workshop is due September 5th (Friday), 2025.

SUBMIT HERE

∗ Organizers:

  • Myeong Lee, George Mason University, USA
  • G. Mauricio Mejía, Arizona State University, USA
  • Rachel B. Warren, University of California Irvine, USA
  • Yunan Chen, University of California Irvine, USA
  • Hiba Siraj, George Mason University, USA
  • Melissa Mazmanian, University of California Irvine, USA
  • Ruchita Mandhre, Arizona State University, USA
  • Kathleen H. Pine, Arizona State University, USA

∗ For any questions, please contact us at mlee89@gmu.edu.


References

  • de Graaff, B., Bal, J., & Bal, R. (2021). Layering risk work amidst an emerging crisis: an ethnographic study on the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in a university hospital in the Netherlands. Health, Risk & Society, 23(3-4), 111-127.
  • Gale, N. K., Thomas, G. M., Thwaites, R., Greenfield, S., & Brown, P. (2016). Towards a sociology of risk work: A narrative review and synthesis. Sociology Compass, 10(11), 1046-1071.
  • Horlick-Jones, T. (2005). On ‘risk work’: Professional discourse, accountability, and everyday action. Health, risk & society, 7(3), 293-307.