Originally from New York, Ofir Klein (he/him) is a fourth-year PhD candidate and graduate instructor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Ofir's dissertation is titled, "Designing Interactions: Geography of the Artificial & Technical Imagination." Combining the discipline of digital geography, the discipline of artifical intelligence, media theory, and continental philosophy with his experiences working as a professional programmer, Ofir's work explores how the computer as a medium shapes and structures our spatial and perceptual experience. To take a step in this direction, the project explores how programming languages shape and structure what the philosopher and media theorist Vilém Flusser calls a programmer's “technical imagination.”  

To empirically study this process, he employs a form of discourse analysis to examine how programming languages are taught and conducts interviews with programmers to understand their experiences and see how they apply their technical imagination in action. This means that his research both examines how and argues that the design of a programming language is what structures this imagination. 

Outside of his research, Ofir is an autodidactic programmer, who has worked professionally as a software developer, data analyst, GIS professional, designer, and translator. He has experience across the field of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, natural language processing, as well as UI/UX and infrastructural and architectural design for applications. 

For interest in any cross-disciplinary collaboration or consultation, please feel free to email me!