Donate to the DSI this Giving Blueday! Support students in exploring the ethical, cultural, and social implications of new technologies.
The University of Michigan’s Digital Studies Institute (DSI) was established in 2019 as LSA’s home for innovative scholarship on digital technologies and culture. Building on its origins as a pilot program launched in 2014 within the Department of American Culture, DSI examines how rapidly evolving technologies shape culture, society, and everyday life, with particular attention to their ethical, social, and aesthetic implications. Today, DSI is one of the largest and most comprehensive initiatives of its kind in higher education and is well-positioned to serve as a national leader in the study of digital technologies and culture.
At the DSI, we study digital technologies not just as tools, but as cultural forces that shape how people communicate, learn, govern, create, and imagine the future. The Institute serves as a center for research, collaboration, and dialogue where faculty, students, and visitors critically engage questions of identity, power, and social justice. Our work addresses transformations in personal identity, experiences of marginalization and unequal access, and the growing ethical challenges of digital environments. Questions about how technologies intersect with race, disability, gender, sexuality, class, and power are central to our teaching, research, and public programming.
The cornerstone of the DSI is our undergraduate minor, complemented by a graduate certificate program, both of which offer a diverse and interdisciplinary curriculum. Course topics range from the history of the internet and artificial intelligence to digital surveillance, race and video games, and critical practices in XR design and social media activism. These programs prepare students to be informed users of digital technologies and thoughtful, pragmatic critics of our digital present and future.
Digital Studies Institute Strategic Fund - 336485
The DSI Strategic Fund is essential to the Institute’s ability to pursue new opportunities and address emerging needs. Gifts of all sizes to the DSI Strategic Fund support core priorities, including undergraduate and graduate student needs, new and emerging technologies, curricular enrichment, faculty recruitment and research, public programming that brings speakers to Ann Arbor and shares U-M research beyond campus, and other initiatives that advance our academic mission.
The Regents of the University of Michigan has 501(c)(3) non-profit tax-exempt status. Federal tax ID number: 38-6006309
