Nicole Starosielski is an American author, researcher, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She conducts research on global internet and media distribution, communications infrastructures ranging from data centers to undersea cables, and mediaâÂÂs environmental and elemental dimensions. Her best-known contribution foregrounds the global subsea cable industry, the sector responsible for the planetary network that carries about 99% of transoceanic data traffic, analyzing its socio-technical organization, market dynamics, governance structures, and sustainability efforts.
She is currently a Principal Investigator for the Sustainable Subsea Networks research project, an academic-industry partnership by the SubOptic Foundation and funded by the Internet Society Foundation. As part of this engagement, Starosielski and her team of doctoral students and collaborators developed a catalog of best practices for sustainability in the subsea cable industry. This includes the first comprehensive study on the carbon footprint of subsea cable networks and the main factors influencing cable sustainability. In December 2023, the project was featured at the COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, becoming the first time sustainability surrounding submarine cables was addressed in the history of the conference.
Her first book, The Undersea Network(2015), and her online project Surfacing are widely cited by journalists around the world covering issues of internet infrastructures, especially in relation to geopolitics, including Russia-US relations, US-China Relations, and growing debates over cybersecurity. Her work has been featured in Scientific American, interviewed on National Public RadioâÂÂs Science Friday and The Takeaway, and covered by Wired Magazine and The Guardian, showcasing mainstream resonance beyond academia.
In 2005, Starosielski graduated from the University of Southern California with Bachelor's degrees in Cinema Television and English. She continued her education at University of California, Santa Barbara, earning both a Master's degree and PhD in Film and Media Studies. After completing her degrees, Starosielski became an Assistant Professor of Communication at Miami University for one year. Following this, she began a career as an Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University Steinhardt where she taught between 2012 and 2023. In the summer of 2023, she joined the faculty of the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, as a full professor.
She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Berkeley Center for New Media (UC Berkeley College of Engineering), and is a member of the Faculty Steering Committee of the Berkeley Space Center, a proposed 36-acre innovation center at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. Starosielski is also a co-convenor of the SubOptic AssociationâÂÂs Global Citizen Working Group.
Starosielski is author or co-editor of over thirty articles and five books on media, infrastructure, and environments, including: The Undersea Network (2015), Media Hot and Cold (2021), Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure (2015), Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (2016), Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media (2021), as well as co-editor of the âÂÂElementsâ book series at Duke University Press.
In her book The Undersea Network, Starosielski examines the underwater telecommunications cable infrastructure that allows the internet to operate. The book covers the history of the cables, as well as the geography of the underwater network. In addition, the book discusses the cultural, political, and environmental implications of underwater cable infrastructure. The Undersea Network includes an analysis of the contingencies of the internet as well as information network myths and challenges. Starosielski argues that the environments the cables occupy are historical and political realms, where the network and the connections it enables are made possible through deliberate negotiation and manipulation of technology, culture, politics and geography. She traces the cable systems from the ocean depths to their landing zones on beaches in the South Pacific, bringing visibility to the materiality of the wired network that is often taken for granted in our "wireless" world.
Surfacing is a website designed as a companion to Starosielski's book. The project was developed by Nicole Starosielski, Erik Loyer, and Shane Brennan, with additional writing from Jessica Feldman and Anne Pasek. The website shows non-lineal archival photographs along with text and information about various areas and countries that are connected through the Pacific's underwater cable network. Surfacing also discusses the history of the underwater cable network and some of the modern day challenges of the system.