Salem Elzway

Salem Elzway is a historian of the 20th century United States whose work engages the intersections of labor, politics, and Science, Technology, and Society (STS). His in-progress manuscript provides the first archivally-based scholarly history of the industrial robot, and explores the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and the politics of automation during and after the Cold War. The book uses the industrial robot as a vehicle to map the political and socioeconomic networks of automation, and demonstrates how the political economy of the technology's design, development, and diffusion exacerbated economic insecurity and social inequality. Support for Elzway's research has come from the Charles Babbage Institute, the Hagley Museum and Library, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation at the University of Virginia, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Elzway received a B.S./B.A. in finance from the University of Nebraska and spent five years in banking and insurance before earning a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan. He served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Southern California and in the Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program at Vanderbilt University. Beyond his academic work, Elzway has provided background and analysis on the history and contemporary politics of automation for Fortune and the Wall Street Journal, and has also been featured on KPFA's nationally broadcast radio program Against the Grain.