Dr. Katie J. Wells is a geographer who studies urban change. She writes about how tech affects the way we live in cities, and especially how we work in them. She has a long record of designing and conducting qualitative research projects about the U.S. gig economy.
As a Senior Fellow at AI Now, she focuses on tech in healthcare. One of her most recent public reports about gig nursing was published by the Roosevelt Institute and garnered wide coverage, including a 500,000+ viewed video by comedian Alex Falcone (“Is Uber for Nursing a Scam?”).
Wells is a co-author of Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City (Princeton University Press, 2023), which The Los Angeles Times called “fantastic,” The American Prospect labeled as “careful and powerful,” and Publishers Weekly described as an “accessible account [that] will be of interest to urban policymakers and activists.” As a follow-up, she and her co-authors published an essay about Uber’s multi-pronged attack on the state in The New York Review of Books (May 2024). A paperback version of their book was released in October 2025.
In 2025, Wells proposed, designed, and led a study about the pricing experiments of Instacart, which generated a video (with 3+ million views) for More Perfect Union, a Consumer Reports petition to the FTC with 42k signatories, a front-cover story in the New York Times, an investigation by the FTC, an investigation by the New York Attorney General, and a public apology and policy change from Instacart.
Wells has a deep commitment to public outreach and sharing the findings of her scholarship with diverse audiences. She has testified about her research on worker power in the age of Big Tech for the U.S. Congress, the Colorado State House, and the D.C. Council. She has also discussed the real-time impacts of her research in media stories in The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, ABC National News, USA Today, CNN, and The Guardian, among others.
Previously, she was the Director of Research and Senior Fellow at Groundwork Collaborative. From 2018 to 2024, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University.
Wells received a PhD in Geography from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a B.A. from the Ohio State University.
As a Senior Fellow at AI Now, she focuses on tech in healthcare. One of her most recent public reports about gig nursing was published by the Roosevelt Institute and garnered wide coverage, including a 500,000+ viewed video by comedian Alex Falcone (“Is Uber for Nursing a Scam?”).
Wells is a co-author of Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City (Princeton University Press, 2023), which The Los Angeles Times called “fantastic,” The American Prospect labeled as “careful and powerful,” and Publishers Weekly described as an “accessible account [that] will be of interest to urban policymakers and activists.” As a follow-up, she and her co-authors published an essay about Uber’s multi-pronged attack on the state in The New York Review of Books (May 2024). A paperback version of their book was released in October 2025.
In 2025, Wells proposed, designed, and led a study about the pricing experiments of Instacart, which generated a video (with 3+ million views) for More Perfect Union, a Consumer Reports petition to the FTC with 42k signatories, a front-cover story in the New York Times, an investigation by the FTC, an investigation by the New York Attorney General, and a public apology and policy change from Instacart.
Wells has a deep commitment to public outreach and sharing the findings of her scholarship with diverse audiences. She has testified about her research on worker power in the age of Big Tech for the U.S. Congress, the Colorado State House, and the D.C. Council. She has also discussed the real-time impacts of her research in media stories in The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, ABC National News, USA Today, CNN, and The Guardian, among others.
Previously, she was the Director of Research and Senior Fellow at Groundwork Collaborative. From 2018 to 2024, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University.
Wells received a PhD in Geography from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a B.A. from the Ohio State University.