Critical Perspectives on Technology — Winter 2020/2021

Previously in Winter 2020/2021

January 28th, 2021 – 4pm (CET, Vienna) – Kishonna Gray (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)

Intersectional Tech: Exploring Black Digital Praxis in Contemporary Gaming 

abstract coming soon!

Bio

Kishonna Gray is currently an Assistant Professor in Communication, Gender and Women’s Studies, and affiliate in Black Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She previously served as an MLK Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT in Comparative Media Studies and the Women & Gender Studies Program and has served as a Faculty Visitor at the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research (Cambridge).  
Her scholarship is influenced by her interdisciplinary training and grounded in critical race theory and feminist approaches to knowledge production. She interrogates the impact that technology has on culture and how Black users, in particular, influence the creation of technological products and the dissemination of digital artifacts. While her extensive publication record explores how technology disparately impacts women and people of color, her current research interrogates the possibilities and potentials of what that technology can afford Black communities who are traditionally excluded from public spaces, including digital ones.

with Sabine Harrer (Uppsala University) as conversation partner.

January 14th, 2021 – 6pm (CET, Vienna) Bo Ruberg (University of Irvine, USA)

The Queer Games Avant-Garde

Sketch of a person leaning with a mask leaning on a motorbike (inspired by the game Sayonara Wildhearts) with purple coloured background and details for the talk written on the left.

Abstract

The queer games avant-garde is a vibrant network of independent video game developers whose radical, experimental, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games. This talk draws from interviews with these innovative game-makers, tracing patterns and tensions across networks of contemporary queer and trans game development. Their insights go beyond typical conversations about LGBTQ representation in video games, however. What emerges from these conversations is an exploration of queer game-making practices, the politics of queer independent video games, queer aesthetics, and the future of queer video games and technology. Even as they wrestle with these topics, LGBTQ game makers subvert and redefine the medium of video games by placing queerness front and center.

Bio

Bo Ruberg, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Their research explores gender and sexuality in digital media and digital cultures with a focus on queerness and video games. They are the author of The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (2020, Duke University Press) and Video Games Have Always Been Queer (2019, New York University Press) and the co-editor of Queer Game Studies (2017, University of Minnesota Press). Ruberg is also the co-founder and co-organizer of the annual Queerness and Games Conference. They received their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with certification in New Media and Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and served as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Interactive Media and Games Division at the University of Southern California.

With Johanna Pirker (TU Graz) as conversation partner.

December 17th, 2020 – 4pm (CET, Vienna) – Selma Šabanović (Indiana University Bloomington, USA) 

Robots for us: Participatory and community-centered design of robots

Abstract

Our visions of having robots present in day to day use in schools, homes, and workplaces are becoming increasingly technically achievable. This brings to the fore concerns about how we can design robots to not only operate in these everyday contexts, but also to fit the needs, practices, values, and preferences of potential users. So far, a majority of user and design research in human-robot interaction has focused on individual responses to robots, which in aggregate represent more generalized attitudes and needs. Robot design, however, rarely takes into account the organizational and community dynamics that robot users, robots, and other stakeholders are a part of. In this talk, we will discuss how organizational and community dynamics and goals affect robot adoption and use, and how we can take them into account in the course of robot design. We will particularly discuss examples of participatory and community-centered design approaches for social robots. 

Bio

Selma Šabanović is an Associate Professor of Informatics and Cognitive Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research combines the critical study of computing with research on human-robot interaction (HRI). She particularly focuses on the design, use, and consequences of socially interactive robots in different cultural contexts. Her work has explored social robot applications in healthcare, education, and the home, and includes comparative studies of robot design and user perceptions in the US and Japan. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction. She recently co-authored the book “Human-Robot Interaction: An Introduction”, published by Cambridge University Press.

with Astrid Weiss (TU Wien) as conversation partner.   

November 26th, 2020 – 4pm (CET, Vienna) – Angelika Strohmayer (Northumbria University, UK)

Justice, but for whom? – Notes on Designing with Marginalised and Criminalised Populations

Abstract

In recent years discussions about social justice have become much more mainstream, as have more specific discussions about how we can use or design digital technologies to help support movements towards better worlds. At the same time, there seems to be near-constant talk about digitalisation of our services, including those of third sector and other non-governmental organisations. Of course, like so many things the ongoing covid-19 pandemic is exacerbating these discussions, as well as our needs for digital services and movements towards more hopeful futures. In this talk, I explore what digitalisation of third sector services can look like when brought into conversation with the hopeful praxis of building more socially just futures. I present a framework for designing in Justice-oriented Ecologies where digital interventions are seen as interwoven with non-digital services, ethical standpoints, and wider political debates. I build this framework on over 5 years of working to design creative and digital interventions with services who support people who are made marginal or criminalised in society such as sex workers, addiction peer support workers, or those experiencing homelessness. It is my hope that this framework will be useful for others to think through the need for digital services, but also to help better articulate how design processes and digital artefacts are part of ecologies that we join and participate in when working collaboratively. 

Bio

Angelika Strohmayer is a lecturer and researcher at Northumbria University’s School of Design and founding member of fempower.tech, an international network of feminist technology researchers. Inspired by feminist participatory action research, Research through Design, and collective making, she works closely with third sector organisations to creatively integrate digital technologies in service delivery and advocacy work. She aims to work collaboratively on in-the-world projects that engage people at all stages of the research process to engender change towards more just worlds.

with Franziska Tachtler (TU Wien) as conversation partner.

November 12th, 2020 – 4pm (CET, Vienna) – Alex Ahmed (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)

Community-based design of open source software for transgender people

Sketch of two people handling a number of cables largely focused on hands with pink background paint indicating all information for the talk.

Abstract

From the surveillance of undocumented people to the algorithmic management and exploitation of gig economy workers, people are increasingly alienated from how technologies are designed and how they impact our lives. These systematic denials of agency predominantly target Black, Brown, working-class, and LGBTQ people. In this talk, I review the social and political contexts surrounding gender self-determination, which existing interactive systems often fail to support or actively deny. I then describe a community-based, human-centered design project to build open source software with and for transgender people. By centering the needs, experiences, and expertise of our community members, we created a customizable voice training app that prioritizes playfulness, affirmation, and care. My work has important implications for how computer science researchers can challenge harmful power dynamics in technology design and implementation through equitable, community-engaged partnerships.

Bio

Alex A. Ahmed is a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute, advised by Sarah Fox and Ken Holstein. Guided by feminist and queer theory, her work involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, community-based design, and open source software frameworks. Her research has been supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, and the CRA/NIH Computing Innovation Fellowship. In her spare time, she sings in an a capella group called the Kinsey Scales, plays guitar and board games, and obsesses about Star Trek.

with Juliana Gleeson (University of Vienna, TU Dresden) as conversation partner

October 29th, 2020 – 4pm (CET, Vienna) – Neha Kumar (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Naveena Karusala (University of Washington)

Neha Kumar (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Naveena Karusala (University of Washington)

Braving Citational Justice within Human-Computer Interaction

sketch of a fist holding a pencil with green paint background.

Abstract

Central to the sharing of knowledge are citations, and how, why, and where citations are used has been an intense subject of study across disciplines. We discuss the politics of knowledge production within HCI, drawing on parallels from related fields, as well as reflecting on our own experiences of being cited and not cited, citing and not citing. We also present recommendations for making concrete changes across the individual and structural in HCI, related to how we view citations, and how we might move ourselves towards the idea of citational justice.

Bios

Neha Kumar is an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she conducts research at the intersection of human-centered computing and global development. She is learning to cite justly.
Naveena Karusala is a fourth year PhD student in the ICTD lab at University of Washington. Her work is at the intersection of HCI, global development, and health messaging. Her ideal world is one in which we do not value a work or individual by citation count.

with DI Marlene Wagner and Dr. Nima TaheriNejad (both TU Wien) as conversation partners.

October 15th, 2020 – 4pm (CEST, Vienna) – Roos Hopman (University of Amsterdam)

Roos Hopman (University of Amsterdam)

The face as folded object: race and the problems with ‘progress’ in forensic DNA phenotyping

Abstract

Forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) encompasses an emerging set of technologies aimed at predicting phenotypic characteristics from DNA in order to help identify unknown suspects. Advocates of FDP present it as the future of forensics, the ultimate goal of these techniques being the production of complete, individualized facial composites based on DNA. With the promise of individuality and the advancement of technology comes the assumption that modern methods are steadily moving away from racial science. Yet in the quantification of physical differences, FDP practices build upon particular nineteenth and twentieth century scientific practices that measured and categorized human variation in terms of race. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in various genetic laboratories, in this talk I therefore complicate a linear temporal approach to scientific progress. Building on the notion of the folded object as developed by Amade M’charek, I bring into focus how race comes about in these practices as a consequence of temporal folds.

Bio

Roos Hopman is a researcher at the anthropology department of the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are in (population) genetics, forensics, and race. Currently she is a PhD candidate in the ERC-funded RaceFaceID project, which ethnographically studies the ir/relevance of race in forensic identification technologies. Her particular focus is on forensic DNA phenotyping, a set of technologies used to infer physical characteristics from biological traces.

with Dr. Simone Kriglstein (Universität Wien) as conversation partner.