Maria Ryabova is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, completing her dissertation Robotics Masculinities: Gendered Technologies of Future-Making in Spring 2026. Drawing on twenty-four months of ethnographic fieldwork in robotics laboratories, government incubators, and Big Tech offices in the U.S., her research compares two contrasting robotics worlds: one of which is heavily VC-funded, located in shiny offices, and predominantly heteronormative and male, and another, which is underfunded, located in shabby old buildings, and female and queer. In addition to her academic writing, Maria engages in creative-critical practice, including the co-installation Closet at HASTAC 2023 (Critical Making and Social Justice, Pratt Institute), and the development of comics and speculative media as feminist ethnographic methods. Her next project turns to China, where she previously worked, to explore robotics within emerging U.S.–China techno-political rivalries.