Bio

My dissertation examined the variety of regulatory imaginaries that shape how regulators, innovators, and entrepreneurs coproduce disruptive technological innovation in advanced industrial democracies. My research interests include regulatory politics, comparative political economy, international political economy, and law and political economy with a particular focus on the politics of technology, regulation & governance, and national models of welfare capitalism. With a background in physics and mathematics, I also work on the deeper insights we can gain from qualitative and multi-method research based on deep case knowledge as well as the potential for computational methods to bridge the qual-quant divide.

While at Berkeley, I also worked as the Graduate Coordinator and Web Manager for the Network for a New Political Economy (N2PE), an interdisciplinary network of faculty and students launched at the University of California, Berkeley that aims to rethink political economy and develop an alternative to the neoliberal paradigm. In my work for the Network, I helped to organize, announce, and run events with faculty and practitioners around the world and collaborated with Steve Vogel to launch the Designated Emphasis in Political Economy at Berkeley, a PhD minor program that allows students to build interdisciplinary skills in Political Economy. This work has continued after my graduation as part of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI).

Before beginning my doctoral work, I worked in e-commerce data production and management to drive faceted search for industrial suppliers. Prior to that, I completed the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) at the University of Chicago with concentrations in Political Science and Science and Technology Studies (STS). I earned simultaneous undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin in Government (with Special Departmental Honors) and Physics (with a minor in Mathematics). In my spare time, I enjoy dabbling in some of the technologies I study, including sewing, 3-D Printing, platform economy pro-sumption, and living in California with a (legally) modified car.

Posch pronounced like “potion” without the “-on.”

I am a Texan born to Californian parents.

As something of a stranger in a strange land, this dissonant identity first sparked my interest in government and governance because I was sure that the knee-jerk mistrust some of my neighbors had of “The Government” could not possibly be a full understanding of the place of government and politics in society. An avid fan of science fiction, my interest in the politics of technology grew from the speculative worlds of such authors as Kim Stanley Robinson, K. A. Applegate, Neal Stephenson, Anne McCaffrey, Issac Asimov, and Frank Herbert. The most frequent question I used to get asked about my research is “How is this politics?”  With formative readings such as those above, how could one not think about the political implications of technology and its governance?  And indeed, in a post-Cambridge Analytica, post-GDPR world, I seem like less of an oddity than once I might have.

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