Keynote-Speakers
Claude Draude
Keynote: Response-ability in Sociotechnical Systems Design
Abstract of the Keynote:
The pervasiveness of Information Technology (IT), notably the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), presents many challenges to matters of fairness, equity, and social justice. Bias and discrimination in AI undermines a fair treatment, especially of marginalized groups. Furthermore, the concentration of power and decision-making within large tech conglomerates, coupled with the current workings of the data-driven economy, diminishes public accountability. Disparities in access to technology compound existing socioeconomic inequalities, limiting societal participation for certain groups. Aligning technological development processes with democratic values and social justice principles calls for a systemic sociotechnical approach. In my talk, I will present examples from my research group's current work and discuss questions of fairness, participation and design interventions through the lens of Donna Haraway's concept of response-ability.
Biography:
Claude Draude is Professor for Participatory IT-Design at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Kassel. Her work is characterized by her multidisciplinary academic background in media science, cultural studies and sociology and her long standing research expertise in computer science. Particular research areas covered are sociotechnical systems design, human-computer interaction and computing and society.
Further information:
Prof. Dr. Claude Draude (Head of Department) (uni-kassel.de)
Kylie Jarrett
Keynote: Work Beyond Work: Reproduction in the Platform Economy
Abstract of the Keynote:
Feminist scholars and activists, especially those shaped by the Marxist feminist tradition, have long argued that more attention be paid to the reproduction of workers, especially within domestic contexts. Drawing on this position and the approach of social reproduction theory, this paper will argue for the importance of investigating work beyond the point of production in order to more fully appreciate the conditions of possibility for work. Using various kinds of platform work as a focus, it will explore the utility of this approach for understanding the economics of the digital media industries. It will then argue for the importance of understanding the embedding of gig work within reproductive social contexts and will finally consider how they hybridity of reproductive labour allows it to feed into acts of resistance and resilience within the platform economy.
Biography:
Kylie Jarrett is Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. She is author of Digital Labor (2022) and Feminism, Labour, and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife (2016) and co-author of NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media (2019) and Google and the Culture of Search (2013). She is also editor of the new journal Dialogues in Digital Society.
Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss
Keynote: Uncertain Intelligences
Abstract of the Keynote:
How is AI impacting, generating and co-writing gender identity and representation? This talk argues that AI - like many technologies before it - participates in structuring and naturalizing normative and binary identity constructions through a recurring mythoi of data as accurate, objective, and producing certainties. In particular with regards to gender, but also race and ethnicity, these categories of identification are weaponized and made binary, determinate, mutually exclusive. More importantly, AI produces antiquated imaginaries of identity and seperability, which are naturalized through new technology’s framing as objective and apolitical, even as it is posited as potentially conscious. Instead of opting for a complete rejection of emerging technology, I argue that what might be needed is a reformulation of the data narrative, a proposition I explore through the concept of “Uncertain Intelligences”. Within the uncertainty paradigm, I focus on artistic production in the service of indigenous, queer, and counter-hegemonic protocols of AI and technology to ask how we might understand technologies as remediating identity, temporality and spatiality in more multiplicitous and community oriented ways.
Biography:
Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss is a cultural and media theorist, researcher, and curator. She works on intersections of feminist and anti-colonial art and political practices, digital technologies, and narrations of (human and non-human) subjectivity. Sara is on the board of diffrakt. Zentrum für theoretische Peripherie and editor at kritisch-lesen.de
Further information:
Dr Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss | HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Photo-Credits:
Portrait of Claude Draude: André Wunstorf
Portrait of Kylie Jarrett: Kylie Jarrett
Portrait of Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss: Alexander Steffens