Welcome to the Relationships & Technology Lab 

I'm Liesel Sharabi, an associate professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication and Director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at Arizona State University.

 

My research focuses on the ways communication technologies are used to develop and dissolve interpersonal relationships. I'm especially interested in modern romance and how technology is transforming the ways we meet, date, and fall in love. Much of my work centers around online dating sites and mobile dating apps. I'm also interested in where dating might be headed in the future, including the implications of multimodal technology use, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR) for relationships. One of the primary goals of my research is to better understand the growing interdependence between online behaviors and offline relationships.

 

My work has appeared in a variety of edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals, as well as in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Boston Globe, Time Magazine, WIRED, and the BBC. I've also spoken about dating apps on radio programs and podcasts like Wireframe, NPR Marketplace, The Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing, and the Harvard Data Science Review. I'm the recipient of the 2022 Early Career Award from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association.

 

More information about our lab can be found on this website. For summaries of some of our latest studies, check out my "Dating in the Digital Age" blog for Psychology Today.​ 

​