Thematic focus: The “Queering AI” session will examine how artificial intelligence systems that rely on data extraction and automated large-scale data classification and processing can solidify heteronormative and ableist socio-technical infrastructures. It will draw connections between queer studies and activism, disabilities studies, and critical technologies studies to consider how “queering AI” can serve both as critique and as creative practice that interrogates and challenges discrimination in technology.

Moderator:

• Mona Sloane

Co-Moderator:

• Arjun Subramonian

Recording: https://youtu.be/bmquMLMnCRQ

Guests:

• Dr. Louise Hickman
• Dr. Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss

ZOOM INFORMATION

When: April, 07, 2022, 6-7 pm CEST | 12-1 pm EST | 7-8 pm TRT

Please register here for the event: here.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the meeting.

 

Dr. Louise Hickman is an activist and scholar of communication, and uses ethnographic, archival, and theoretical approaches to consider how access is produced for disabled people. Her current project focuses particularly on access produced by real-time stenographers and transcriptive technologies in educational settings. She uses an interdisciplinary lens drawing on feminist theory, critical disability studies, and science and technology studies to consider the historical conditions of access work, and the ways access is co-produced through human (and primarily female) labour, technological systems, and economic models and conditions.  Louise is currently a Research Associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge.  Louise previously worked as a Senior Research Officer at the London School of Economics and Political Science Department of Media and Communications and at Ada Lovelace Institute’s JUST-AI Network on Data and AI Ethics. She continues to co-convene the JUST AI’s working group on rights, access and refusal. An academic, artist, activist, she earned her PhD in Communication from the University of California, San Diego in 2018, and held a postdoctoral position in the Feminist Labor Lab at UC San Diego.

Since 2016, Louise has also worked as an access consultant and speaker for Parkeology, a U.S. based public art program.

Dr. Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss is a cultural and media theorist, feminist and educator currently affiliated with the GenderConceptGroup at Technical University Dresden’s Digital Gender Project as a postdoc. Sara’s current research explores dimensions of technological relationality, materiality, and aesthetics. More specifically, Sara interrogates AI imaginaries and their material realities through feminist, queer and decolonial theorizing, currently focussing on speculative AI projects and the arts. Sara is on the board of diffrakt. centre for theoretical periphery in Berlin, an editor at kritisch-lesen.de and affiliated researcher with the Data Politics Lab, a collective committed to exploring political dimensions of technological governance.

Arjun Subramonian (they/them) is a brown queer neurodivergent PhD student and Cota-Robles fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Their research focuses on inclusive graph machine learning & natural language processing, drawing from mathematical theory and LGBTQIA+ perspectives. They are a core organizer of Queer in AI, a NeurIPS 2022 Affinity Workshops chair, and a NAACL 2022 DEI chair. They previously organized QWER Hacks and taught machine learning and AI ethics at under-resourced schools in Los Angeles. Arjun graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA, where they received the School of Engineering’s Outstanding Bachelor of Science, Chancellor's Service, and Student Welfare awards. Twitter: @arjunsubgraph.

Mona Sloane, Ph.D. is a sociologist working on design and inequality, specifically in the context of AI design and policy. She is a Senior Research Scientist at the NYU Center for Responsible AI, Faculty at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, a Fellow with NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK) and The GovLab, and the Director of the *This Is Not A Drill* program on technology, inequality and the climate emergency at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is principal investigator on multiple research projects on AI and society, and holds an affiliation as postdoctoral scholar with the Tübingen AI Center at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Mona founded and runs the IPK Co-Opting AI series at NYU and currently serves as editor of the technology section at Public Books. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Follow her on Twitter @mona_sloane.

Thematic focus: This session will discuss the impact of open data, sensing devices and AI on public transport and autonomous driving with a particular focus on the possibilities and problems of so-called smart mobilities for disabled people. How does the development of “smart” and algorithmic mobilities raise questions about bodily or sensory differences as well as for spaces such as roads and sidewalks? What projects might challenge the normative bias inscribed in mobility technologies? By tackling these issues, the event addresses the ambivalences of automobile autonomy, reflecting on accessible routing and interdependence as a crucial dimension of sustainable, accessible and fair mobility for all people.

Moderator/s:

• Robert Stock

Guests:

• Cynthia L. Bennett, The Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
• Gerard Goggin, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, NTU Singapore
• Constantin Grosch, Sozialhelden e.V., Berlin

 

ZOOM INFORMATION

When: April, 28, 2022, 6-7 pm CEST | 12-1 pm EST | 7-8 TRT  

Please register here for the event: here.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the meeting.

 

Cynthia Bennett is a human-computer interaction researcher studying the impact of sociotechnical systems, including novel AI powered experiences, on people with disabilities. A postdoctoral researcher in Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Cynthia received a Ph.D. from the University of Washington's Human Centered Design and Engineering Department. Current research focuses on the intersection of AI, novel accessibility solutions, and bias as well as accessible computing research labs and design studios. Cynthia's research findings inform inclusive and ethically-designed processes and experiences.

Gerard Goggin is the Wee Kim Wee Chair in Communication Studies at Nanyang Technological Unversity and an internationally renowned scholar in communication, cultural, and media studies. His influential research on the cultural and social dynamics of digital technology includes books such as Cell Phone Culture (2006) and Global Mobile Media (2011). A key researcher in the area of accessibility, digital technology and disability, he is profoundly engaged in research on Internet and digital technology accessibility. Gerard Goggin has long-standing interests in the social, cultural, political, and policy dynamics of emerging technology – especially mobile communication and media, Internet, social media, and, most recently, Internet of Things, connected cars, automation and AI. Current research project: Designing AI to Stop Disability Bias.

Constantin Grosch is an inclusion activist, member of the district council of the city of Hameln for the Social Democratic Party, member of the board of trustees Forum Inklusion Hameln, chairman of the supervisory board VHP/Öffis in Hameln-Pyrmont. As a project manager of BarrierenBrechen at Social Heros (Sozialheld*innen) in Berlin, he is involved in centering accessibility and inclusion regarding public transport systems in Germany i.e. through accessible routing planning.

Robert Stock is an Assistant Professor for Cultures of Knowledge at the Department of Cultural History and Theory at Humboldt University Berlin. Main research interests are cultures of knowledge, digital media and dis/abilities, politics of inclusion and access work.

He is co-founder of the research network Dis/Abilities and Digital Media funded by German Research Foundation, DFG. ORCiD IDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2256-0928

Thematic focus: The session will depart from ableist critiques and sociological debates pointing towards the dominating functionalist view on bodily and neuro-typical competence-orientation in social research and in many socio-technical and digital constellations. It wishes to inquire about recent discussions on what it means to conceptualize refusal, bodily resistant practices and bodily unavailabilities for heterogeneously differentiated societies. The aim is to bring this into dialogue with the figure of the technocrip and crip technoscience as developed in critical disability studies and access studies.

Moderator/s:

• Hanna Göbel 

Guests:

• Tobias Boll
• Katta Spiel
• Ashley Shew

 

ZOOM INFORMATION

When: May 19, 2022, 6-7 pm CEST | 12-1 pm EST | 7-8 pm TRT

Please register here for the event: hcu-hamburg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_puokPMTjT22g2kQT8fq3Sg

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the meeting.

 

Tobias Boll, is a sociologist at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. His research areas include the sociology of the body, gender studies, and studies of "human categorization". In his ongoing research he investigates constructions of dis/ability in sexual education programs and assistance services for people with disabilities. Methodologically, his work combines ethnographic and discourse analytical strategies. He is currently a substitute professor for methods of empirical social research at the University of Bayreuth. 

Katta Spiel,  researches marginalised perspectives on technology. Their work informs  design and engineering in critical ways to support the development of technologies that account for the diverse realities they operate in.  Their research is situated at the intersection of Computer Science, Design and Cultural Studies. Drawing on methods from (Critical) Participatory Design and Action Research, Katta collaborates with neurodivergent and/or nonbinary peers in conducting explorations of novel potentials for designs, methodological contributions to Human-Computer Interaction and innovative technological artefacts. Currently, Katta is a FWF Hertha-Firnberg scholar at the HCI Group of TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), where they work on the project “Exceptional Norms: Marginalised Bodies in Interaction Design”.

Ashley Shew, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech (US). Shew works on disability narratives about technology, which include themes around cyborg/cripborg resistance; this work is part of a US National Science Foundation sponsored project on Disability, Experience, and Technological Imagination (#1750250). Her past work argues for the inclusion of non-human animal tool use in our accounts of technology and knowledge, Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge (2017). She is co-editor of three volumes in Philosophy of Technology and current co-editor-in-chief for Techné (the journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology). She's currently working on a popular oriented book called Technoableism and, with her research team, open educational resources on counter narratives about technology and disability.

Hanna Göbel is currently a Substitute Professor for Urban Anthropology and Ethnographic Methods at HafenCity University in Hamburg. Her main research areas and current interests are anthropology and sociology of the body, cultural sociology, disabilities and the urban form, (urban) publics and (digital) audiences of disability. 

Thematic focus: The session “Access Aesthetics in Dance and Performance” wishes to discuss the aesthetics of access in dance and performance. It will bring together experts of dance and performance, who work on digital technologies of access, especially in the context of the digital distribution of dance pieces and performances. The aim is to discuss access in the digital realm by means of how disability aesthetics in dance and performance challenge the collective sensorium.

Moderator/s:

• Hanna Göbel
• Mara Mills 

Guests: 

Nina Mühlemann, Bern 

Andy Slater, Chicago 

Melanie Zimmermann, Hamburg

 

Please register here for the event: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MzmokV52QMKPIesn6LlPug

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the meeting.

 

Nina Mühlemann is an artist and disability scholar based in Zurich, Switzerland and completed her PhD at King’s College London in Disability Studies and Performance Studies in 2017 (‘Beyond the Superhuman–Disabled Artists Working in the Context of London 2012’). From 2018-2019 she was co-director of the Future Clinic for Critical Care, a socio-culturally animated theatre practice project based in Zurich. Since 2020 she is co-director of Criptonite, a Zurich-based queer-crip theatre project. She has co-curated the symposia It’s a Matter of Perspective (IntegrART, Zürich, 2019), Exploring Crip Spacetime (No Limits Festival, Berlin, 2019) and Rethinking Structures (IntegrART, Zürich, 2021). Since 2022 she is a postdoctoral researcher for the SNF-project “Aesthetics of the im/mobile” at the University of the Arts Berne.

 

Andy Slater is a Chicago-based media artist, sound designer, and access advocate.  

He is a member of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists and a teaching artist with the Atlantic Center for the Arts’ Young SoundSeekers program. He holds a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a 2022 United States Artists fellow, 2022-2023 Leonardo Crip Tech Incubator fellow and  a 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago. In 2020 Andy was acknowledged for his art  by the New York Times in their article, “28 Ways To Learn About Disability Culture.” Andy’s current work focuses on advocacy  for accessible art and technology, Alt-Text for sound and image, the phonology of the blindbody, spatial audio for extended reality, and sound design for film, dance, and video games. He has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Mcsweeneys Quarterly Concern, the Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco,Transmediale Festival Berlin,  Chicago Inclusive Dance Festival, Ian Potter Museum of Art Melbourne, Critical Distance Toronto,  Gallery 400  Chicago, Experimental Sound Studios Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, Flux Factory New York, and Momenta Dance Company Chicago. 

 

Melanie Zimmermann, dramaturge and curator at Kampnagel, Hamburg. After working for film and television, she studied Cultural Studies and Dance in Frankfurt on the Oder and in Paris. She was press and public relations assistant for the Forsythe Company and studied dramaturgy with Hans-Thies Lehmann in Frankfurt on the Main and in Brussels; in 2010, she was on a danceWEB scholarship. Then she began working as freelance dance and theatre dramaturge, e.g. for Wanda Golonka, Peeping Tom, Sebastian Matthias, Laurent Chétouane and was project manager of the MAMAZA collective. Since 2010 she works as dance dramaturge and curator at Kampnagel. Since eleven years, she supports and creates festivals, events and formats to support the international collaboration of dance makers. From 2018 - 2022 she was realizing the “Europe beyond Access” program at Kampnagel. 

 

Hanna Göbel is currently a Substitute Professor for Urban Anthropology and Ethnographic Methods at HafenCity University in Hamburg. Her main research areas and current interests are anthropology and sociology of the body, disabilities and the urban form, (urban) publics and (digital) audiences of disability. 

 

Thematic focus: In this panel we focus on the implications of DIY, Open Source and Design aspects as a way of self empowerment for people with disabilities - especially in West Asia. Considering ambivalent sides of self-empowerment and precarious aspects, like digital divide, digital literacy, etc. we shed light on which, e.g. socio-cultural, linguistic, geo-political dimensions have to be taken into account when providing and circulating technoscientific knowledge and designing DIY worldwide. The aim is to not only highlight DIY as a valuable alternative to standardized assistive technologies but also possible conflicting aspects of DIY for people with disabilities in West Asia and thus make a transcultural contribution to Disability Studies and Crip Technoscience.

Moderator/s:

• Melike Şahinol
• Robert Stock 

Guests: 

• Eser Epözdemir (Visual Artist, Cultural producer, Accessibility in Turkey)
• Assoc. Prof. Azam Naghavi & Ali Abbasi (University of Isfahan: Assistive Technology and DIY in Iran)
• Zeynep Karagöz (Pro-Maker)

 

ZOOM INFORMATION

When: July, 07, 2022, 6-7 pm CEST | 12-1 pm EST | 7-8 pm TRT

Please register: here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the meeting.

 

Eser Epözdemir, (b.1984, Istanbul) the artist studied Fine Arts at Valencia Polytechnic University and Painting at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, holds an MA degree in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design from Sabancı University. She focuses on systemic change, mechanisms of functioning, inclusivity/equality/apathy, and the way things relate to each other. In addition to her artistic productions and research she worked in various areas of the art and culture industry such as publishing and radio (as the managing editor and broadcaster of the Açık Dergi (Açık Radyo 95.0) program between 2013-2015). Epözdemir is the Culture and Art Accessibility Consultant of Erişilebilir Her Şey; a start-up company that provides services for individuals with different physical characteristics. 

Dr. Azam Naghavi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Isfahan, Iran. She has finished her PhD in Psychology at Monash University, Australia, and in 2014 moved back to Iran and started her work at the University of Isfahan. Since 2015, she is appointed as the representative of internationalization of the Faculty of Education and Psychology and made efforts in expanding the University’s international relationships. she is responsible for running the Master’s degree program on Rehabilitation Counseling in the University of Isfahan. Her main research interests are empowerment of people with special needs including people with disability or chronic illness, traumatized, minority and marginalized people.

Ali Abbasi, is a young disability advocate in Isfahan, Iran. He has received his MA in Political Sciences and International Relationships from the University of Isfahan. He has a physical disability and had done considerable activities in the area of disability rights, such as being a member of youth consulting council in the City of Isfahan, director of the people with disability section in the Isfahan annual film festival, member of adaptability council. His books -Accessible tourism, Infographic of rights of people with disability, & How to treat people with disability- as well as his published papers are some other examples of his works as a disability advocate.      

Zeynep Karagöz graduated from Üsküdar American Academy for Girls and MSÜ – Architecture after attending an ordinary grade school with an extraordinary teacher. In 2001 she co-founded KOMA Architecture with Serdar Okumuş. In 2008 KOMA merged with 5 dakika and became an experience design service company. In 2014, they started making 3D printed mechanical hands for children with hand deformation who don’t have access to prosthetics in Robotel Türkiye. They also volunteered in the Maker Community. In 2017, Robotel became an NGO and the Maker projects turned into a social entrepreneurship business. They made programs on 21.Century & technology skills with Maker Çocuk & Maker Atölye. Today, Zeynep continues in Robotel as head of the Association. She also shares her expertise and experience in multidimensional & multidisciplinary projects as a speaker, consultant, trainer & mentor. She defines myself as a PROMAKER who is a civil society addict & a social entrepreneurship fan.

 

Thematic Focus: This panel offers a preview of Crip Authorship: Disability as Method, an edited collection to be published by NYU Press in December 2022. The volume surveys research, writing, genre, publishing, and media in disability studies and activism. Editors Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez will introduce the collection, followed by presentations from three of the authors whose chapters focus on disability and the digital.

Moderator:

• Mara Mills, with co-editor Rebecca Sanchez

Guests:

• Louise Hickman on AI and captioning
• Emily Lim Rogers on virtual ethnography
• Bri M on accessible podcasting

 

Emily Lim Rogers is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of American Studies, the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. She teaches courses at the intersection of disability studies, STS, the medical humanities, gender/sexuality studies, and the history of capitalism. She received her Ph.D. in American studies at New York University, where she also spent three years as the administrator for the Center for Disability Studies. Her research considers the incomplete medicalization of chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS. The project probes what scientific uncertainty reveals about the fraught gendered and racialized dynamics that determine who is allowed to be ill, and examines the uneven uptake of debility in the sociocultural context of the United States.

 

Bri. M (ze/zir) is a Black, Jamaican-American, queer, non-binary, disabled alien-prince from The Bronx. Ze is a podcaster and political agitator with a fierce desire to change the way disabled people are seen in mass media. Ze is the host, producer and editor of POWER NOT PITY, a podcast about the lived experiences of disabled people of color. Bri's episodes serve as a vehicle for amplifying and preserving the voices of disabled people of color. Ze is committed to interjecting disability justice in any conversation zir has and loves to cultivate collaborative energy with writers, artists and storytellers within zir community.

 

Louise Hickman's academic work focuses on the automation of accessibility for disabled people, as well as on questions of social justice and processes of exclusion that are driven by the politics of austerity. She uses an interdisciplinary lens, drawing on critical disability studies, feminist labour studies, and science and technology studies to consider the historical conditions of access work and the ways access is co-produced through human labour, technological systems, and economic models and conditions. Louise previously worked as a senior research officer for the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science and for the Ada Lovelace Institute's JUST-AI Network on Data and AI Ethics. She continues to co-convene the JUST AI's working group on rights, access and refusal. An academic, artist and activist, she earned her PhD in Communication from the University of California, San Diego in 2018, and held a postdoctoral position in the Feminist Labor Lab at UC San Diego.