Lucy Suchman is Professor Emerita of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom,[1] also known for her work at Xerox PARC in the 1980s and 90s.

Her current research extends her longstanding critical engagement with the field of human-computer interaction to the domain of contemporary war fighting, including problems of ‘situational awareness’ in military training and simulation, and in the design and deployment of automated weapon systems.

[2] Suchman is a member of International Committee for Robot Arms Control[3] and the author of the blog dedicated to the problems of ethical robotics and 'technocultures of humanlike machines'[4] Before coming to Lancaster, she worked for 22 years at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, where she held the positions of principal scientist and manager of the Work Practice and Technology research group.

Suchman's book, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-machine Communication (1987), provided intellectual foundations for the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).

This second edition, called Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action, included five new chapters exploring developments in the field of computing and social studies technology since the mid-1980s.