Matt Goerzen

Research Interests: History of computer security; expertise and legitimacy; media manipulation; securitization; STS; global history.

Matt Goerzen is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. His dissertation examines changing conceptions of “vulnerability” in the history of computing, from the early days of computer security to contemporary concerns around “cognitive security.” His research often considers the ways hackers and other outsiders have influenced security policy and practices.

Matt is an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Before pursuing his PhD, he worked as a journalist, artist, and researcher, documenting novel forms of security vulnerability in sociotechnical systems.

Publications:

“Visions of (In)Security: Anti-Security, Project Mayhem, and Unruly Expertise,” H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum, Policy Roundtable III-4: The Practices and Politics of Cybersecurity Expertise, 2024.

Wearing Many Hats: The Rise of the Professional Security Hacker (with Gabriella Coleman), Data & Society Research Institute, 2021.

Presentations:

“Patchwork Undergrounds: Phrack’s 'International Scene' Reports and the Imagining of a Global Hacker Scene, 1993–2016,” SIGCIS, 2024.

“Security by Spectacle: The Invention of Gray Hat Hacking & The Fight Against Microsoft in the 1990s” (with Gabriella Coleman and Brian Friedberg), Berkman Klein Center, 2021. 

“Entanglements and Exploits: Sociotechnical Security as an Analytic Framework” (with Gabrielle Lim and Elizabeth Anne Watkins), Usenix Security FOCI ’19, 2019. 

“Black Hat Trolling, White Hat Trolling, and Hacking the Attention Landscape” (with Jeanna Matthews), WWW '19: Companion Proceedings of The 2019 World Wide Web Conference, 2019. 

Previous Degrees:

Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy), Carleton University
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Concordia University
Masters of Communications Studies, McGill University