Yuliya (Julie) Grinberg, PhD is a digital anthropologist and a seasoned research and insights professional. In her industry work, she combines business savvy culled from years of brand strategy and qualitative research experience with academic rigor and depth. Dr. Grinberg has worked with fortune 500 companies across a range of categories, including Finance, CPG, B2B, and the Technology sectors. Grounding her work in anthropological approaches, she develops research that has “legs;” research that takes her clients into uncharted strategic territories and new creative directions.
Dr. Grinberg specializes in digital culture. In addition to her mixed-methods industry research, she has taught courses on ethical, social, and political issues as they relate to questions of technological innovation, automation, big data, and the future of work. She previously taught at The Cooper Union, NYU, Barnard College, and Drew University.
She holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University. Her doctoral work examined the diverse ways professional ambitions, commercial imperatives, and entrepreneurial anxieties shape digital knowledge. This research forms the basis of her first book, Ethnography of an Interface: Self-Tracking, Quantified Self, and the Work of Digital Connections which was published in 2025 by Cambridge University Press. She also holds a B.S. in Marketing from NYU Stern School of Business.
Fluent in Russian, in her spare time she enjoys reading in both languages, traveling to new destinations, and baking with her son and daughter.
Illustration shows the sphygmograph developed by Etienne-Jules Marey in 1860, as depicted in Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992)