She is the author of Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (Zone Books, 2013). Her work explores the ethics and politics of digital mapping and its technologies; the art, science and visualization of big and small data; and design environments for public engagement with maps and data. From 2004 - 2015, she founded and directed the Spatial Information Design Lab at GSAPP. The SIDL "Million Dollar Blocks" project is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and her work has also been shown at Palais De Tokyo and the Fondation Cartier in Paris, MACBa in Barcelona and the ZKM in Karlsruhe. In 2009, Kurgan was awarded a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. 

In her current work, she is interested in exploring the ways in which data and its representation shapes our understanding of land use productivity and is critical of the relationship between forest land, wildlife reserves, sites of extraction and infrastructure. She received her MArch from Columbia, GSAPP, where she has received the GSAPP Visualization Award, William Kinne Fellows Travelling Prize and the 'Avery 6' Award.

His work predominantly explores methodologies, collaborative processes, and tools that engage or activate data and media toward spatial justice. Prior to joining the CSR, Dan managed human rights and spatial analysis casework at Brooklyn-based architectural practice SITU as well as access to and visualization of historical US Census data at Social Explorer. He has contributed to work exhibited at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Yale University Art Gallery, and he has taught methods in environmental and urban sociology at Queens College CUNY.