Dr. Izzy Fox
We are delighted to announce that we have begun interviewing representatives of various disciplines, including community archivists, digital artists, Digital Humanities scholars, coders, fem tech practitioners, activists and more. The interviewees are experts within their fields, while also being members of communities traditionally marginalised within digital spaces on the basis of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and more, as well as intersecting identities. Furthermore, the interview process, along with other Full Stack Feminism community engagement events such as the upcoming community archives forum, underscores our commitment to amplifying these minoritized voices.
One of the key purposes of the interviews is to gain the perspectives of these communities in identifying the biases and stereotypes that pervade digital spaces from the level of code, right through data models, infrastructure, curatorial decisions and accessibility.
The interviews will cover the follow general topics:
1) the methods community archivists employ to collect, store and digitise data, the metadata standards applied and how data is made accessible to users;
2) the ways in which digital tools, platforms, data sets and algorithms can be exclusionary for those engaged in digital projects, particularly those who are from minoritized communities;
3) the supports (financial/logistical/technical/advisory) that have been received and what would help develop the project further in the future.
The insights gained from the interviews will then feed into our toolkit that will include open-source resources, such as frameworks, coding tutorials, a Full Stack Feminism in DH manual (to include a practical guide to applying intersectional feminist methods to project developments), and a range of published literature.
We would like to thank all of our interviewees for their thoughtful contributions and for being so generous with their time in sharing their insights with us.