Martha Poon

Martha Poon is a social scientist interested in how data-intensive systems are changing the public’s relationship to finance. She researches and writes about the impact of credit scoring technology on consumer access to credit. At the Data & Society Research Institute, she will be developing strategies for investigating, explaining, and communicating the role of information systems in financial innovation. Poon has done research at the New School for Social Research; the London School of Economics; the Institute for Pubic Knowledge at NYU; the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware; the National Superior School of Mining and Engineering in Paris; as well as at the Centre on Organizational Innovation at Columbia University. Her first paper on the history of subprime lending was awarded the 2008 Hacker-Mullins Prize from the Science, Knowledge and Technology section of the American Sociological Association. Her major research project has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France. In 2012, she earned a doctoral degree from the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. She has done US equities reporting for the markets desk of the Financial Times.