Research Interests

I am a researcher working at the intersection of digital governance, media and information systems, and research mobilization and translation, with a focus on how emerging technologies shape trust, perception, and decision-making. I recently complete my PhD at the University of Toronto and am currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Waterloo, where I am affiliated with the Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology Scholarly Network.

My work examines the historical, political, and material dimensions of media technologies used in governance, surveillance, and shaping of human conduct. I am particularly interested in optical and wearable media, and how visual information systems—from early instruments to contemporary AI-enabled devices—organize attention, behaviour, and authority. My recent research explores how these system produce trust and distrust, and how both information flows and material infrastructures mediate our relationships with increasingly intimate technologies. You can read more about it here.

My co-authored book The Prison House of the Circuit, was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2023, which traces the historical development of media infrastructures and their role in governing modern life. I am also actively writing a Substack on the history of technology called Analog vs Digital as a way to contextualize contemporary debates about emerging and disruptive technologies. Drawing on historical case studies, the newsletter connects past technological transformations to present day questions about AI, platforms, and digital governance, offering longer-term perspective for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners alike.

Paula's CV

Selected Publications

Books

Packer, J., Nuñez de Villavicencio, P., Monea, A., Oswald, K., Maddalena, K., & Reeves, J. Prisonhouse of the Circuit: A Media Genealogy. University of Minnesota Press (2023).

In this book we investigate key points at which analogue information systems were replaced by digital ones to understand how power, information, and subjects are made to circulate. The monograph includes five case studies that explore ​​military telegraphy and human–machine incorporation, the establishment of national electronic biopolitical governance in World War I, media as the means of extending spatial and temporal policing, automobility as the mechanism uniting mobility and media, and visual augmentation from Middle Ages spectacles to digital heads-up displays.

Book Chapters and Sections

Nuñez de Villavicencio, P. “Colour or Greyscale: A Photographer’s Dilemma.” In Show Theory to Know Theory: Understanding Social Science Concepts through Illustrative Vignettes, edited by Patricia Ballamingie and David Szanto. Ottawa, ON: Showing Theory Press, 2022. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/showingtheory/chapter/subjectivity/

Journal Articles

Nuñez de Villavicencio, Paula. “Procedural Rhetoric in Operational Optical Media: How Humans Are Persuaded to See the World” Rhetor, 9 (2024).

Moriarty, D., Núñez de Villavicencio, P., Black, L., Bustos, M., Cai, H., Mehlenbacher, B., and Mehlenbacher, A. “Durable Research, Portable Findings: Rhetorical Methods in Case Study Research.” Technical Communication Quarterly 28, no. 2 (April 3, 2019): 124–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2019.1588376.