Nicole Pangborn
pangborn [at] alumni [dot] princeton [dot] edu
Hi! I’m Nicole.
I’m a mixed-methods researcher with a background in Sociology, Anthropology, and Mathematics.
I’m originally from Providence, Rhode Island, where I’m currently living, along with my partner (Chris), son (Oscar), and dog (Macaroni).
UX Research
Right now, I’m a Senior UX Researcher at MathWorks, where I work with Graphics development teams to improve data visualization workflows in MATLAB. Previously, I was at Yahoo, where I worked on the Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, and Yahoo Mail products. My goals as a UX Researcher are always to both (1) provide actionable insights to product managers, designers, and engineers; and (2) to learn more about how humans interact with, change, and are changed by technology.
Sociology
In 2019, I completed my PhD in Sociology at Princeton. I spent six years there training to become an ethnographer —learning immersive fieldwork techniques, studying face-to-face interaction, and conducting in-depth interviews. My dissertation was an ethnography of an Italian bakery on the outskirts of Providence, RI, where I lived and worked for two years. You can download a copy of my dissertation here if you’d like.
Teaching
I’ve had the opportunity to prepare syllabi and teach undergraduate courses at both Princeton and Ohio State.
At Ohio State, I developed and taught an Honors Intro to Sociology course. At Princeton, I co-taught an upper level undergraduate seminar about residential segregation in 2019, and served as an Assistant in Instruction for Social Networks (2015), Introduction to Sociology (2014), and Technology and Society (2014).
Writing
You can find a collection of some of my writing here. The collection includes both academic pieces as well as some fictional short stories.
Reading
Here are a few of the books and stories which have changed me recently, in no particular order:
History, by Elsa Morante.
“Shoe Story,” by Peter Orner.
Stoner, by John Williams.
From the Land of the Moon, by Milena Agus.
C.V.
You can find a .pdf of my cv here, and are very welcome to email me for more information.