Elizabeth Petrick received her PhD in History and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2012. She also has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. She studies the history of computer technology, artificial intelligence and decision-making, the relationship between technology and users (particularly, users with disabilities), and how technology relates to civil rights.

Dr. Petrick's first book, Making Computers Accessible: Disability Rights and Digital Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) was the winner of the 2017 Computer History Museum Book Prize. Her new book, The Tablet Computer: The Idea of a Machine (part of the Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology, 2026) examines the history of tablet computers and how ideas behind what tablets were good for drove their development within multiple companies and research groups since the 1970s. She is now working on a new book project on the history of AI software agents.

Dr. Petrick teaches courses on the relationships between technology, society, and law, as well as disability history.

Selected Publications:

• E. Petrick, The Tablet Computer: The Idea of a Machine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).
• E. Petrick, Making Computers Accessible: Disability Rights and Digital Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).
• E. Petrick, “‘Take my will with them:’ The Agency of Telescript Mobile Agents in the 1990s,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (Forthcoming).
• E. Petrick, “Spanning Space and Time Barriers: Computerized Conferencing, Disability, and Citizenship,” in Jeffrey R. Yost and Gerardo Con Díaz, eds, Just Code: Power, Inequality, and the Global Political Economy of IT (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025): 193-211.
• E. Petrick, “Turtles, Tablets, and Boxes: Computer Technology and Education in the 1970s,” Information and Culture 58, no. 3 (2023): 274-294.
• E. Petrick, “The Computer as Prosthesis? Embodiment, Augmentation, and Disability,” in Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick, eds, Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022): 399-415.
• E. Petrick, "A Historiography of Human-Computer Interaction," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Special Issue on “Interface Architects: The Evolution of Human–Computer Interaction,” 42, no. 4 (October-December, 2020): 8-23.
• E. Petrick, “Building the Black Box: Cyberneticians and Complex Systems,” Science, Technology, & Human Values, Special Issue on “Unpacking the Black Box,” 45, no. 4 (July 1, 2020): 575–595.