Devin Kennedy is Assistant Professor of History and the Evelyn and Herbert Howe Bascom Professor of Integrated Liberal Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a PhD in the History of Science from Harvard and an AB from Princeton in Comparative Literature, and works across business history, science and technology studies, and the histories of science and technology. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the New-York Historical Society.
Kennedy's main research interest is the history of computer science and digital technology. His first book Coding Capital (Columbia University Press, 2026) offers a new account of computing since 1947, situating developments in computer science and technology in the context of postwar US economic history. The book shows how computer science--often before it had that name--cut its teeth addressing problems among the manufacturing and financial industries that were early adopters of computer systems. His second project is an intellectual and social history of academic computer science.
At UW-Madison, Kennedy teaches in History the Program in the History of Science, Technology & Medicine at UW-Madison, as well as the undergraduate ILS program. He is the co-lead of the Uncertainty and AI Working Group
A current CV is here.
(Columbia University Press Studies in the History of US Capitalism)
Coding Capital: Computing in the Postwar US Economy situates the history of computer science within developments in the US economy, tracing how the manufacturing and financial industries molded technology and scientific research towards their needs, and how in turn, computing supported the emergence of a financialized economy. The book covers a forty-year period spanning between the earliest discussions of computers as tools to solve the dilemmas of the postwar industrial firm, through the computer-accelerated collapse of the US stock market on Black Monday 1987.
I teach in the History and History of Science, Medicine and Technology Programs at UW-Madison. I am especially interested in working with graduate students in these programs and in other fields working on topics related to the history of computer technology and computer science, 20th century economic, institutional and labor history, as well as the history of technology and science broadly. I emphasize a combination of approaches drawing from media studies, STS, business and economic history. I have advised students in prelim qualifying fields in:
© 2024 Devin Kennedy. Last updated: January 16, 2025.
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