Sarah Ciston

Sarah Ciston (they) is the Professor of Computational Thinking & Aesthetic Doing at Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Their artistic research builds tools to bring intersectional, critical–creative approaches to machine learning. Winner of the 2025 Ars Electronica STARTS Grand Prize, they are the author of “A Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets” and co-author of Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI (MIT Press, Spring 2026).