Dear All,
Hope you are doing well.
We are back with our Critical Computing Seminar! Our next speaker is Maggie
Jack and she will deliver her lecture online on March 30 at 2 pm. Please
find the details about the event below (and how to register).
Best Regards,
Ishtiaque
==
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Faculty Fellow, Schwartz Reisman Institute <https://www.torontosri.ca/>
The University of Toronto
Program Committee Chair, ICTD 2022 <https://ictd.org/ictd2022/>
Bahen Centre for Information Technology, Room 5262
Saint George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4, Canada
Ph: +1 647 220 3482
web: https://www.ishtiaque.net/
My Availability: Google Calendar Link
<https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ishtiaque.uoft%40gmail.com&c…>
==
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Priyank Chandra <priyank.chandra(a)utoronto.ca>
Date: Fri, Mar 25, 2022 at 4:24 PM
Subject: Critical Computing Seminar (March 30): "Media Ruins:
Infrastructural Restitution and Building Futures in Post-Conflict Cambodia"
To: ISCHOOL-FAC-REG-L(a)LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA <
ISCHOOL-FAC-REG-L(a)listserv.utoronto.ca>
Cc: Ishtiaque Ahmed <ishtiaque(a)cs.toronto.edu>, Robert Soden <
robert.soden(a)utoronto.ca>, Adrian Petterson <a.petterson(a)mail.utoronto.ca>,
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat <rashidujjaman.rifat(a)mail.utoronto.ca>, Cansu
Ekmekcioglu <cansu.ekmekcioglu(a)mail.utoronto.ca>
Dear All,
We are happy to announce the March edition of the Critical Computing
seminar series. This a monthly online seminar where we invite scholars to
discuss topics in critical computing. The objective of the seminar is to
create a broader understanding of computing from different ethical, social,
and cultural perspectives. You will find more information about this
seminar series and upcoming speakers by following the link:
https://sites.google.com/view/uoft-critical-computing/seminar-series
This month (March, 2022), Margaret "Maggie" Jack, a postdoctoral scholar
from Syracuse University will give a talk on “*Media Ruins: Infrastructural
Restitution and Building Futures in Post-Conflict Cambodia*” on *Wednesday,
March 30, 2am to 3:30pm EST.*
We invite you all to join the seminar. Please check the following link for
more details about the seminar at:
https://sites.google.com/view/uoft-critical-computing/seminar-series/margar….
The registration link is at: https://bit.ly/CCS_MaggieJack.
A flyer is also attached to this email, and I have appended the seminar
details at the bottom of this email. Please feel free to forward this
invitation to anyone interested (within and outside UofT).
We look forward to seeing you all at the seminar.
Best Regards,
Priyank Chandra (On behalf of the Organizers)
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto
*Media Ruins: Infrastructural Restitution and Building Futures
in Post-Conflict Cambodia*
Maggie Jack, Syracuse University, The School of Information
Maggiejack.info
@slouching_mags
*Time:* 30 March, 2022 from 2-3.30 PM, EST
The registration link is: https://bit.ly/CCS_MaggieJack
This talk describes the ways that Cambodian new media creators commemorate
lost artists and an imagined better way of life through finding, repairing,
and disseminating historical film, photography and cinema artifacts from
before the Khmer Rouge period, often using digital tools. Reconstructing
such media artifacts through a process of *infrastructural restitution *is
a mode of healing from decades of national conflict and a form of subtle
political action in an increasingly authoritarian Phnom Penh. Building on
theory at the intersection of infrastructure studies (Star and Ruhleder,
1996; Larkin, 2013) and media’s relationship to memory (Gordon, 2008;
Larkin, 2008; Richards, 1994), the concept of infrastructural restitution
allows us to (re)integrate the importance of memory, the affective, and the
spiritual into scholarship of infrastructure. This case gives new insight
into the tension in transnational technology use between creative
appropriation and the problematic political economy of mainstream
platforms. The empirical sections of this talk are based on my historical
and ethnographic research in Phnom Penh beginning in January 2014,
including 20 months of full-time research from June 2017-January 2019.
*Bio:* I am a postdoctoral scholar on the NSF-funded project “Creating
Work/Life <https://creatingworklife.com/>” with a team spanning Syracuse
University (PI: Ingrid Erickson
<https://ischool.syr.edu/people/directories/view/imericks/>) and University
of California, Irvine (PI: Melissa Mazmanian <https://melissamazmanian.com/>).
I am a research affiliate at the Digital Life Initiative
<https://www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/> at Cornell Tech in New York City and an
adjunct professor at NYU Tandon, teaching “Transnational Technology” in the
spring of 2022. I hold a PhD in Information Science
<https://infosci.cornell.edu/> (2020) from Cornell University, where I had
a minor PhD concentration in Anthropology
<https://anthropology.cornell.edu/> and was an active member of the Southeast
Asia Program <https://seap.einaudi.cornell.edu/>. I use my past
professional experiences in the technology industry in Silicon Valley and
the international development sector and my academic background in the
History of Science (BA Harvard University; MPhil University of Cambridge)
to approach questions of contemporary computing with both scholarly and
practical lenses. My writing is published in the *Proceedings of the SIGCHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing *(CHI), * Interactions* *Magazine*,
*The Information Society*, *Global Perspectives*, *Computer Supported
Cooperative Work* (CSCW), and elsewhere. My book-in-progress *Media Ruins*
is under contract in the Labor and Technology series at the MIT Press
(Katie Helke, editor; Winifred Poster, series editor).
*List of relevant work:*
- *Margaret Jack* and Seyram Avle. “A Feminist Geopolitics of Technology”*
Global Perspectives*. June 2021. <https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.24398>
https://online.ucpress.edu/gp/article/2/1/24398/117347/A-Feminist-Geopoliti…
- *Margaret Jack*, Sopheak Chann, Steven J Jackson, and Nicola Dell.
2021. Networked Authoritarianism at the Edge: The Digital and Political
Transitions of Cambodian Village Officials.Proc. *ACM Hum.-Comput.
Interact.*5, CSCW1, Article 50 (April 2021).
<https://www.maggiejack.info/s/Networked_Authoritarianism_at_the_Edge.pdf>
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3449124
- *Media Ruins: Cambodian Postwar Infrastructural Restitution and the
Geopolitics of Technology*, forthcoming book
Hello all,
I want to invite you all to the next DCI event<https://dci.ischool.utoronto.ca/defund-big-tech-refund-community-reflection…>, in which Associate DCI Fellow Dr. Vanessa Thomas will build on the TechOtherwise platform’s Defund Big Tech report and reflect on their experiences attempting to implement the Canadian government’s feminist commitments<https://women-gender-equality.canada.ca/en/gender-based-analysis-plus.html>. Please join if you can and spread the word. Thank you!
Vanessa Thomas – Defund Big Tech, Refund Community: Reflections and actions from a federal public servant
March 31, 12pm-1pm ET
Online event – please register here <https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/vanessa-thomas-reflections-on-defund-big-tec…> for Zoom link.
The Defund Big Tech, Refund Community report offered a call to action for many industries, organizations, and individuals—including but not limited to “Governments and Policymakers<https://techotherwise.pubpub.org/pub/dakcci1r/release/3#2zuoz4a3xl>“. In this presentation, Dr. Vanessa Thomas (they/them, he/him, she/her) will draw on their experiences working in the federal public service—most recently as the lead researcher and manager for a feminist research team at Employment and Social Development Canada—to reflect on the Defind Big Tech proposals. Vanessa’s talk will address some of the challenges facing employees and teams who attempt to implement the government’s feminist commitments<https://women-gender-equality.canada.ca/en/gender-based-analysis-plus.html>; drawing from those challenges, Vanessa will speculate about the future(s) of #govtech, #civictech and government digital services if we were to attempt to defund big tech. The presentation will involve prompts to encourage an active and open discussion amongst participants.
Vanessa Thomas, PhD, (they/them, he/him, she/her) is an anti-disciplinarian queer settler with training in computer science, design, management studies, feminist methodologies, and environmental studies, amongst many other fields. Vanessa currently works full-time for the Government of Canada, teaches part-time at Carleton University, and supervises graduate students part-time through HyperIsland. Vanessa’s research builds on the TechOtherwise<https://techotherwise.pubpub.org/> platform’s Defund Big Tech<https://techotherwise.pubpub.org/defund-big-tech> report to explore how governments and policymakers could take active steps in the directions outlined there. For the past seven months, Vanessa has been drawing on their expertise in speculative design, digital innovation, feminisms, and leadership to try to establish a feminist technology research team at Employment and Social Development Canada. Vanessa has been undertaking this work from multiple locations in what is currently known as Canada.
https://dci.ischool.utoronto.ca/defund-big-tech-refund-community-reflection…
Prof Christoph Becker
he/him
Associate Professor, Faculty of Information
Director, Digital Curation Institute
University of Toronto
www.christoph-becker.info<http://www.christoph-becker.info/>
https://twitter.com/ChriBecker