She is director of the Visual Studies curriculum and the Spatial Information Design Lab, and is co-director of the Advanced Data Visualization Project. Kurgan is the author of Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (2013). Her work explores digital mapping technologies, ethics and politics of mapping, and the visualization of big and small data, and has appeared at the Fondation Cartier, Paris; Venice Architecture Biennale; Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She was the winner of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship in 2009.