ifte programme

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University of Cambridge – IFTe workshop series 3 Spring 2021

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Under Your Nose: Documenting BAME LGBT HistoryVirtual screening of Under Your Nose with Q and A with film-maker Veronica McKenzie

Chair: Páraic Kerrigan, UCD – April 19, 4:30pm

UNDER YOUR NOSE (2017) by Veronica McKenzie charts the history of the Black Lesbian and Gay centre, which operated in London in the 1980s. Thirty five years ago a group of activists came together with one aim – to open a centre for the BAME LGBT community in London. Against the backdrop of 1980s politics, Thatcherism, AIDS and burgeoning gay rights, Under Your Nose celebrates those trailblazing human rights workers whose political legacy is still apparent today.

About the film-maker Veronica McKenzie worked in the charity sector before transitioning to film and TV. She co-produced THE LAST SUPPER (2011) about homelessness in LA, and her documentaries FINDING HOME – about LGBTQ+ Asylum seekers & immigrants – and UNDER YOUR NOSE (2017), stem from her interest in documenting UK black history, and led to Haringey Vanguard, an oral history project, that captures the lived experiences of the UK’s black LGBTQ+ community in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Her recent film NINE NIGHTS recently won a PAFF Feature Narrative Award and is currently out on Amazon. 

Investigating Collaborative Writing as Feminist Theory and Practice, Chair: Caroline Bassett and Kylie Jarrett, IFTe PIs – 11th -19th March

This workshop series was designed to:

• Enable network members to look more closely at writing exploring DH and feminism and look at intersectional theory itself;
• Explore writing together as a feminist practice which comments on/critiques normative idea of authorship and might have something to say to collaborative working practices in DH;
• Collaborate to plan and produce journal and other outputs.

Session Breakdown

Reading Group Sessions: Two extended reading group discussions drew on prepared reading lists to explore emerging critiques of intersectionality; consider various forms of feminist thinking about interconnections between sex, gender, class and race; and to examine DH methods and epistemologies in relation to feminist theorizations of ethics, knowledge production, and power. Reading Group expert guests: Kate O’Riordan (University of Sussex, UK) and Radhika Gajjala (Bowling Green, US).

A Wagtail, Netflix and a Vegan Roll: This collaborative writing session was led by cultural producer and writer Sarah Lee. The session developed individual writing practices and explored methods for writing together.

Exploring Synthetic Writing: This session was led by theory fiction writer and academic Joe Walton. The participants used Twine to explore constraint and/in text generation along with the dynamics of machine writing.

Writing Group Sessions: Two writing sub-groups met in multiple sessions to develop plans for writing outputs on ‘liveness, performance and bodies’ and ‘intersectional theory and DH methodologies’.

The Chain: This session developed content for the IFTe writing experiment The Chain.

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Maynooth University & Technological University of Dublin – IFTe workshop series 2 – Spring 2021

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‘Transforming Archives: Intersectional Feminist Approaches to the Practice and Reading of Archives‘

Network Theme 2: Methods: Archiving and Communities
Maynooth University & Technological University of Dublin – February 2021

Archives and archival practice have a troubling history. At their worst, they have involved the reification of their objects, turning living cultural practices into decontextualised objects stripped of their richer purpose. Curation and collection involve decisions of value which have too often imposed dominant meanings and created exclusions from the historical narrative. Archives have been associated with othering and colonisation practices and the abstractions of masculinised thinking. With the dominance of archiving projects within Digital Humanities it is vital to understand how we may build more inclusive archives but also how we may break the models so that they can express different ideals. 

This set of workshops seek to examine the nature of archives from an intersectional feminist perspective, looking to explore and understand archives, curation, and archiving practices that reflect these principles. These workshops brought together archivists, artists, curators, community organisations, and academics to identify the issues associated with digital archiving and to explore alternative models of curation, collection, storage, expression, and interaction for these practices. We see feminist archiving as a means to amplify, record, and safeguard marginalised voices, and of a method that pushes the boundaries of what we think archives are and what they should consist of. 

The first two workshops showcased various alternative archives based on two themes – the first on community and institutional collaboration and the second on activist archiving practice – while the third workshop was a hands-on feminist archiving activity.  

The event will conclude with a public talk hosted by our partner organisation, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).  

Workshop 1:  Community and  institutional  collaboration  – February 8th, 2pm-5pm  
This workshop explored the building of new archives that engage with communities and institutions. Speakers include: Veronica McKenzie, Haringey Vanguard, ‘Whose values matter in Collections? Archiving materials from BME LGBTQ+ communities’
Aileen O’Carroll, Digital Repository of Ireland, ‘Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th project’
Hannah Tiernan – Queer-in-Progress Timeline
Margaretta Jolly & Eleanor Careless, University of Sussex, ‘Mapping the Feminist Marketplace: Making A Digital Map of the Women’s Liberation Movement’

Workshop 2: Archivism – February 9th, 2pm-5pm  
This workshop explored archives as activism. Speakers include;
Orla Egan, Cork LGBT Archive, ‘Queer Archival Activism’
Leon Diop – Black and Irish Social Media Community
Seamus Nolan – Traveller Community Archive
Chair: Natalie Harrower, Director of the Digital Repository Ireland and IFTe Steering Committee.

Workshop 3: Community Archiving Workshop - What is feminist archiving?  February 10th, 2pm-4:30pm 
DIY feminist archival practices for researchers, with Niamh Moore and Sharon Webb and other team members from the Reanimating Data project. 

Workshop 4: Public Talk - hosted by Irish Museum of Modern Art  – February 11th, 8pm  Speaker: Dr. Tonia Sutherland – University of Hawaiʻi at Māno 
Digital Remains: Reflections on Race and the Digital Afterlife
Chair: Sharon Webb, University of Sussex, IFTe Co-I

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University of Sussex & Maynooth University – IFTe Workshop Series 1 Autumn 2020

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Feminist Coding and Programming Praxis

This series contributed to the stated objectives of the Network: to highlight intersectional work that promotes, generates and supports feminist praxis that re-shape Digital Humanities.

Feminists Hacking the System(s): Creation, Liberation, and Action was the first in a series of events related to the ‘Intersections: Feminism, Technology, and Digital Humanities’ Network. It is composed of 3 online events that will take place over the course of a week (10th, 11th, and 13th Nov.). Each event explored structural inequalities in computational systems, and considers feminist interventions which help to make computational technology and Digital Humanities more inclusive, exploring these from the following perspectives:

• Code and Multiculturalism (Tues. 10th November 2020, 15.00 – 17.00 GMT) – chair: Jeneen Naji – IFTe Co-I
• Code and Labour (Wed. 11th November 2020, 14.30 – 16.30 GMT) – chair: Sharon Webb – IFTe Co-I
• Code and Democratic Tools (Fri. 13th November 2020, 15.00 – 17.00 GMT) – chair: Cecile Chevalier – IFTe Co-I

The workshops explore the way in which coding and programming practices, from a feminist perspective or approach, have materialised and developed across different website fields (e.g. cultural heritage, history, digital media art, computational art).

Feminism, Digital Humanities, Epistemology
University of Cambridge
Intersectional Feminism, Digital Humanities, Epistemology: What does feminism have to say about the epistemic culture we are building with digital technologies? And how can we address these issues both as theoretical concerns and as forms of research in practice that have a bearing on how we do DH, as theory, as archiving, as collecting? In addressing these issues it is tempting to focus exclusively on emerging concerns (AI) but we also need to learn from our past so this workshop will look at the resources of feminist theory as it has addressed the recurring and unresolved inequalities, exclusions and occlusions of digital culture – and as it contributes to properly utopian thinking about how technological cultures could be better for (all) of us.http://eepurl.com/hl8D-L