Category: Conferences

Workshop CSCW 2021: Global Labours of AI and Data Intensive Systems

Posted on by Alex Taylor

CSCW 2021 conference paper

Posted on by Alex Taylor
A CSCW con­fer­ence paper from this year.

Beat­rice Vin­cen­zi, Alex S Tay­lor, Simone Stumpf (2021) Inter­de­pen­dence in Action: Peo­ple with Visu­al Impair­ments and Their Guides Co-Con­sti­tut­ing Com­mon Spaces, Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Inter­act. 5(CSCW1), New York, NY, USA: Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery, pdf, doi:10.1145/3449143

Abstract
Pri­or work on AI-enabled assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy (AT) for peo­ple with visu­al impair­ments (VI) has treat­ed nav­i­ga­tion large­ly as an inde­pen­dent activ­i­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, much effort has focused on pro­vid­ing indi­vid­ual users with wayfind­ing details about the envi­ron­ment, includ­ing infor­ma­tion on dis­tances, prox­im­i­ty, obsta­cles, and land­marks. How­ev­er, inde­pen­dence is also achieved by peo­ple with VI through inter­act­ing with oth­ers, such as in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sight­ed guides. Draw­ing on the con­cept of inter­de­pen­dence, this research presents a sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis of sight­ed guid­ing part­ner­ships. Using inter­ac­tion analy­sis as our pri­ma­ry mode of data analy­sis, we con­duct­ed an empir­i­cal, qual­i­ta­tive study with 4 cou­ples, each made up of per­son with a vision impair­ment and their sight­ed guide. Our results show how pairs used inter­ac­tion­al resources such as turn-tak­ing and body move­ments to both co-con­sti­tute a com­mon space for nav­i­ga­tion, and repair moments of rup­ture to this space. This work is used to present an exem­plary case of inter­de­pen­dence and draws out impli­ca­tions for design­ing AI-enabled AT that shifts the empha­sis away from inde­pen­dent nav­i­ga­tion, and towards the care­ful­ly coor­di­nat­ed actions between peo­ple nav­i­gat­ing together.
Inter­de­pen­dence in Action, CSCW 2021 (360 downloads) 

CHI 2021 conference papers

Posted on by Alex Taylor
Two papers at the CHI con­fer­ence this year.

Sara Heitlinger, Lara Hous­ton, Alex Tay­lor, Ruth Cat­low (2021) Algo­rith­mic Food Jus­tice: Co-Design­ing More-than-Human Blockchain Futures for the Food Com­mons, Pro­ceed­ings of the 2021 CHI Con­fer­ence on Human Fac­tors in Com­put­ing Sys­tems, New York, NY, USA: Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery, pdf, doi:10.1145/3411764.3445655

Abstract
The rela­tion­ships that con­sti­tute the glob­al indus­tri­al food sys­tem tend towards two dom­i­nant val­ues that are cre­at­ing unsus­tain­able social and envi­ron­men­tal inequal­i­ties. The first is a human-cen­tered per­spec­tive on food that priv­i­leges humans over all oth­er species. The sec­ond is a view of food as a com­mod­i­ty to be trad­ed for max­i­mum eco­nom­ic val­ue, reward­ing a small num­ber of share­hold­ers. We present work that explores the unique algo­rith­mic affor­dances of blockchain to cre­ate new types of val­ue exchange and gov­er­nance in the food sys­tem. We describe a project that used role­play with urban agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties to co-design blockchain-based food futures and explore the con­di­tions for cre­at­ing a thriv­ing mul­ti­species food com­mons. We dis­cuss how the project helped rethink algo­rith­mic food jus­tice by recon­fig­ur­ing more-than-human val­ues and recon­fig­ur­ing food as more-than-human com­mons. We also dis­cuss some of the chal­lenges and ten­sions aris­ing from these explorations. 
Algo­rith­mic Food Jus­tice, CHI 2021 (284 downloads) 

Ceci­ly Mor­ri­son, Edward Cutrell, Mar­tin Grayson, Anja Thieme, Alex Tay­lor, Geert Roumen, Camil­la Long­den, Sebas­t­ian Tschi­atschek, Rita Faia Mar­ques, Abi­gail Sell­en (2021) Social Sense­mak­ing with AI: Design­ing an Open-End­ed AI Expe­ri­ence with a Blind Child, Pro­ceed­ings of the 2021 CHI Con­fer­ence on Human Fac­tors in Com­put­ing Sys­tems, New York, NY, USA: Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery, pdf, doi:10.1145/3411764.3445290

Abstract
AI tech­nolo­gies are often used to aid peo­ple in per­form­ing dis­crete tasks with well-defined goals (e.g., recog­nis­ing faces in images). Emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that pro­vide con­tin­u­ous, real-time infor­ma­tion enable more open-end­ed AI expe­ri­ences. In part­ner­ship with a blind child, we explore the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties of design­ing human-AI inter­ac­tion for a sys­tem intend­ed to sup­port social sense­mak­ing. Adopt­ing a research-through-design per­spec­tive, we reflect upon work­ing with the uncer­tain capa­bil­i­ties of AI sys­tems in the design of this expe­ri­ence. We con­tribute: (i) a con­crete exam­ple of an open-end­ed AI sys­tem that enabled a blind child to extend his own capa­bil­i­ties; (ii) an illus­tra­tion of the delta between imag­ined and actu­al use, high­light­ing how capa­bil­i­ties derive from the human-AI inter­ac­tion and not the AI sys­tem alone; and (iii) a dis­cus­sion of design choic­es to craft an ongo­ing human-AI inter­ac­tion that address­es the chal­lenge of uncer­tain out­puts of AI systems. 
Social Sense­mak­ing with AI, CHI 2021 (196 downloads) 

Conference papers

Posted on by Alex Taylor
I’ve been slow to share papers here, so post­ing about two recent­ly pub­lished papers. With both pub­li­ca­tions it was a absolute joy and priv­i­lege to work with my co-authors.

Cyn­thia L Ben­nett, Daniela K Ros­ner, Alex S Tay­lor (2020) The Care Work of Access, CHI ’20, p. 1–15, New York, NY: ACM Press, pdf, doi:10.1145/3313831.3376568

Abstract
Cur­rent approach­es to AI and Assis­tive Tech­nol­o­gy (AT) often fore­ground task com­ple­tion over oth­er encoun­ters such as expres­sions of care. Our paper chal­lenges and com­ple­ments such task-com­ple­tion approach­es by attend­ing to the care work of access-the con­tin­u­al affec­tive and emo­tion­al adjust­ments that peo­ple make by notic­ing and attend­ing to one anoth­er. We explore how this work impacts encoun­ters among peo­ple with and with­out vision impair­ments who com­plete tasks togeth­er. We find that bound up in attempts to get things done are con­cerns for one anoth­er and how well peo­ple are doing togeth­er. Read­ing this work through emerg­ing dis­abil­i­ty stud­ies and fem­i­nist STS schol­ar­ship, we account for two impor­tant forms of work that give rise to access: (1) mun­dane attune­ments and (2) non-inno­cent autho­riza­tions. Togeth­er these process­es work as sen­si­tiz­ing con­cepts to help HCI schol­ars account for the ways that intel­li­gent ATs both pro­duce access while some­times sub­vert­ing peo­ple with disabilities.
The care work of access, CHI 2020 (569 downloads) 

Jes­si­ca L Feuston, Alex S Tay­lor, Anne Marie Piper (2020) Con­for­mi­ty of Eat­ing Dis­or­ders through Con­tent Mod­er­a­tion, Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Inter­act. 4(CSCW1), New York, NY, USA: Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery, pdf, doi:10.1145/3392845

Abstract
For indi­vid­u­als with men­tal ill­ness, social media plat­forms are con­sid­ered spaces for shar­ing and con­nec­tion. How­ev­er, not all expres­sions of men­tal ill­ness are treat­ed equal­ly on these plat­forms. Dif­fer­ent aggre­gates of human and tech­ni­cal con­trol are used to report and ban con­tent, accounts, and com­mu­ni­ties. Through two years of dig­i­tal ethnog­ra­phy, includ­ing online obser­va­tion and inter­views, with peo­ple with eat­ing dis­or­ders, we exam­ine the expe­ri­ence of con­tent mod­er­a­tion. We use a con­struc­tivist ground­ed the­o­ry approach to analy­sis that shows how prac­tices of mod­er­a­tion across dif­fer­ent plat­forms have par­tic­u­lar con­se­quences for mem­bers of mar­gin­al­ized groups, who are pres­sured to con­form and com­pelled to resist. Above all, we argue that plat­form mod­er­a­tion is enmeshed with wider process­es of con­for­mi­ty to spe­cif­ic ver­sions of men­tal ill­ness. Prac­tices of mod­er­a­tion reassert cer­tain bod­ies and expe­ri­ences as ‘nor­mal’ and val­ued, while reject­ing oth­ers. At the same time, nav­i­gat­ing and resist­ing these nor­ma­tive pres­sures fur­ther inscribes the mar­gin­al sta­tus of cer­tain indi­vid­u­als. We dis­cuss changes to the ways that plat­forms han­dle con­tent relat­ed to eat­ing dis­or­ders by draw­ing on the con­cept of mul­ti­plic­i­ty to inform design.
Con­for­mi­ty of eat­ing dis­or­ders, CSCW 2020 (533 downloads) 

CHI Workshop

Posted on by Alex Taylor

Very hap­py to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the CHI ’19 con­fer­ence workshop:
Explor­ing the Inter­sec­tion of Phi­los­o­phy and HCI

Ann Light and I wrote a short piece for the workshop: 

The Name of the Title is Hope

Figure from paper: Figure 1: Multispecies, multiscalar relations.

ABSTRACT: This short piece, far too short for the space it demands, spins togeth­er a live­ly and unwieldy sto­ry about methods—the prac­tices we in design and design research fol­low to both know about the world and to have an affect on it. We spec­u­late on a mode of doing design inflect­ed with ques­tions about what we are doing when we study and inter­vene in the world. This is a project full with the hope of renewed design­er­ly meth­ods that make more of/in the world; that pro­mote a flour­ish­ing of dif­fer­ence; and that might just lead to mod­est but bet­ter ways of liv­ing and dying togeth­er. Our phi­los­o­phy (if that is not too grand a word for it) comes less from a ”stand­ing on the shoul­ders” of any one per­son, and more a think­ing through and with fem­i­nist ways of know­ing, doing, and being. Weav­ing into a mesh of ideas from the likes of Barad, Der­ri­da, Dewey, Durkheim, Hack­ing, Har­away, Law, Stengers, and so on, we find there to be trou­bles between the ways we come to know the world (doings, meth­ods or prac­tices), and what we know (know­ings or the­o­ries). The prob­lem­at­ic dis­tinc­tion between such doings and know­ings, and the murky worlds between them, open up a space for think­ing-doing a world oth­er­wise. When we come to accept that what we do and what we know are always already togeth­er, and that this ’togeth­er­ness’ is all the world can be, then we, in design, are left with a begin­ning: “What worlds do we want to do-know?”

Down­load PDF

EASST 2018 Presentation

Posted on by Alex Taylor
Abi­gail Dur­rant and I gave our paper “Mod­el­ling Cells in/with risky comak­ings and devi­ous worlds” at EASST last week, in the fab­u­lous Fem­i­nist Fig­ures panel.

Mod­el­ling cells in/with risky comak­ings and devi­ous worlds

ABSTRACT
We use String Fig­ures and Invo­lu­tion­ary Momen­tum to “read against the grain” of a con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous biol­o­gy char­ac­terised by reduc­tion. Work­ing through the design of a tool that mod­els cel­lu­lar sta­bil­i­ty, we spin a yarn of “affec­tive­ly charged” rela­tions between researchers, cells and technologies.
Draw­ing from her foun­da­tion­al stud­ies of biol­o­gy, Eve­lyn Fox Keller (2009:301) writes of a com­plex­i­ty and con­nect­ed­ness that might just char­ac­terise our “devi­ous” world(s). She has traced threads through biol­o­gy for over 40 years, draw­ing atten­tion to—amongst oth­er things—how it has often resist­ed the explana­to­ry pow­ers con­ferred upon its coun­ter­parts in oth­er nat­ur­al sci­ences. A prag­mat­ic approach has dom­i­nat­ed, she extols, in which unknowns have been a part of biology’s messy reality.
Look­ing ahead, to the deep­en­ing entan­gle­ments between biol­o­gy and com­pu­ta­tion, we find con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous imag­i­nar­ies sur­round­ing cel­lu­lar life to be test­ing this lin­eage. Certainly—as Keller her­self has reflected—computation makes pos­si­ble very par­tic­u­lar modes of under­stand­ing, ones con­form­ing to the “reduc­tive, mech­a­nis­tic, and adap­ta­tion­ist log­ics” that char­ac­terise a pre­vail­ing neo-Dar­win­ism (Hus­tak & Myers 2013:77).
In this paper, we wish to cut across what on the face it appears to be biology’s nar­row­ing move. By ‘look­ing askew’, we hope to ask more about biol­o­gy and whether or not it is being ren­dered com­pu­ta­tion­al. Exam­in­ing a project invest­ed in the com­pu­ta­tion­al chal­lenges of mod­el­ling cel­lu­lar sta­bil­i­ty, and rely­ing on the “risky comak­ings” (Har­away 2016:14) between actors, algo­rithms and com­pu­ta­tion­al tools, we stay com­mit­ted to the trou­bles enlivened by knot­ted rela­tions. We use two fem­i­nist fig­ures, Haraway’s String Fig­ure, and Hus­tak and Myer’s Invo­lu­tion­ary Momen­tum, to (re-)tell a sto­ry of unfold­ing rela­tion­ships between researchers, cells and tech­nolo­gies, spin­ning a yarn of “affec­tive­ly charged” (Hus­tak & Myers 2013) relays and knot­tings that resist sin­gu­lar figurings.
Ref­er­ences
Har­away, D.J., 2016. Stay­ing with the trou­ble: Mak­ing kin in the Chthu­lucene. Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press.
Hus­tak, C. and Myers, N., 2012. Invo­lu­tion­ary momen­tum: Affec­tive ecolo­gies and the sci­ences of plant/insect encoun­ters. dif­fer­ences, 23(3), pp.74–118.
Keller, E.F., 2009. Mak­ing sense of life: Explain­ing bio­log­i­cal devel­op­ment with mod­els, metaphors, and machines. Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press. 

Papers presented at CHI ’18

Posted on by Alex Taylor

Delight­ed to see the two great papers I con­tributed to being pre­sent­ed at CHI 2018 in Montreal.

Ari Schlesinger, Ken­ton O’Hara and Alex Tay­lor (2018) Lets Talk about Race: Iden­ti­ty, Chat­bots, and AI. In Pro­ceed­ings CHI ’18. ACM Press. 

pdf (1280 downloads)

Anja Thieme, Cyn­thia L. Ben­nett, Ceci­ly Mor­ri­son, Edward Cutrell and Alex Tay­lor (2018) “I can do every­thing but see!” – How Peo­ple with Vision Impair­ments Nego­ti­ate their Abil­i­ties in Social Con­texts. In Pro­ceed­ings CHI ’18. ACM Press. 

pdf (877 downloads)

Abstract — Why is it so hard for chat­bots to talk about race? This work explores how the biased con­tents of data­bas­es, the syn­tac­tic focus of nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, and the opaque nature of deep learn­ing algo­rithms cause chat­bots dif­fi­cul­ty in han­dling race-talk. In each of these areas, the ten­sions between race and chat­bots cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple and machines. By mak­ing the abstract and dis­parate qual­i­ties of this prob­lem space tan­gi­ble, we can devel­op chat­bots that are more capa­ble of han­dling race-talk in its many forms. Our goal is to pro­vide the HCI com­mu­ni­ty with ways to begin address­ing the ques­tion, how can chat­bots han­dle race-talk in new and improved ways?
Abstract — This research takes an ori­en­ta­tion to visu­al impair­ment (VI) that does not regard it as fixed or deter­mined alone in or through the body. Instead, we con­sid­er (dis)ability as pro­duced through inter­ac­tions with the envi­ron­ment and con­fig­ured by the peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy with­in it. Specif­i­cal­ly, we explore how abil­i­ties become nego­ti­at­ed through video ethnog­ra­phy with six VI ath­letes and spec­ta­tors dur­ing the Rio 2016 Par­a­lympics. We use gen­er­at­ed in-depth exam­ples to iden­ti­fy how tech­nol­o­gy can be a mean­ing­ful part of abil­i­ty nego­ti­a­tions, empha­siz­ing how these embed into the social inter­ac­tions and lives of peo­ple with VI. In con­trast to treat­ing tech­nol­o­gy as a solu­tion to a ‘sen­so­ry deficit’, we under­stand it to sup­port the tri­an­gu­la­tion process of sense-mak­ing through pro­vi­sion of appro­pri­ate addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion. Fur­ther, we sug­gest that tech­nol­o­gy should not try and replace human assis­tance, but instead enable peo­ple with VI to bet­ter iden­ti­fy and inter­act with oth­er peo­ple in-situ.

CHI 2018 papers.

Posted on by Alex Taylor

Anja Thieme, Cyn­thia L. Ben­nett, Ceci­ly Mor­ri­son, Edward Cutrell and Alex Tay­lor (2018) “I can do every­thing but see!” – How Peo­ple with Vision Impair­ments Nego­ti­ate their Abil­i­ties in Social Con­texts. In Pro­ceed­ings CHI ’18. ACM Press. 

pdf (877 downloads)

Ari Schlesinger, Ken­ton O’Hara and Alex Tay­lor (2018) Lets Talk about Race: Iden­ti­ty, Chat­bots, and AI. In Pro­ceed­ings CHI ’18. ACM Press. 

pdf (1280 downloads)

Very hap­py to have con­tributed to two papers being pre­sent­ed at the upcom­ing CHI con­fer­ence this year. One reports on work with the blind and vision impaired a few of us have been involved in dif­fer­ent ways (see here). Broad­ly, we’ve used the piece to reflect on the rela­tions between vision impair­ment and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and set out direc­tions for a pos­si­ble design space.

The sec­ond paper picks up on a new theme for me, but one close­ly relat­ed to past reflec­tions and design work around machine intel­li­gence. With the fan­tas­tic Ari Schlesinger (GA Tech) lead­ing the research, we exam­ine the chal­lenges faced in han­dling race talk (and racism) in human-bot inter­ac­tions. Tak­ing both Tai AI and the black­list as start­ing points, we take seri­ous­ly the com­pu­ta­tion­al under­pin­nings of chat bots and con­ver­sa­tion­al agents, to under­score the role they have in sus­tain­ing trou­bling racial cat­e­gories and the con­di­tions they make pos­si­ble for more just and equi­table ways forward.

Abstract — This research takes an ori­en­ta­tion to visu­al impair­ment (VI) that does not regard it as fixed or deter­mined alone in or through the body. Instead, we con­sid­er (dis)ability as pro­duced through inter­ac­tions with the envi­ron­ment and con­fig­ured by the peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy with­in it. Specif­i­cal­ly, we explore how abil­i­ties become nego­ti­at­ed through video ethnog­ra­phy with six VI ath­letes and spec­ta­tors dur­ing the Rio 2016 Par­a­lympics. We use gen­er­at­ed in-depth exam­ples to iden­ti­fy how tech­nol­o­gy can be a mean­ing­ful part of abil­i­ty nego­ti­a­tions, empha­siz­ing how these embed into the social inter­ac­tions and lives of peo­ple with VI. In con­trast to treat­ing tech­nol­o­gy as a solu­tion to a ‘sen­so­ry deficit’, we under­stand it to sup­port the tri­an­gu­la­tion process of sense-mak­ing through pro­vi­sion of appro­pri­ate addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion. Fur­ther, we sug­gest that tech­nol­o­gy should not try and replace human assis­tance, but instead enable peo­ple with VI to bet­ter iden­ti­fy and inter­act with oth­er peo­ple in-situ.
Abstract — Why is it so hard for chat­bots to talk about race? This work explores how the biased con­tents of data­bas­es, the syn­tac­tic focus of nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, and the opaque nature of deep learn­ing algo­rithms cause chat­bots dif­fi­cul­ty in han­dling race-talk. In each of these areas, the ten­sions between race and chat­bots cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple and machines. By mak­ing the abstract and dis­parate qual­i­ties of this prob­lem space tan­gi­ble, we can devel­op chat­bots that are more capa­ble of han­dling race-talk in its many forms. Our goal is to pro­vide the HCI com­mu­ni­ty with ways to begin address­ing the ques­tion, how can chat­bots han­dle race-talk in new and improved ways?

Paper presented at Assets

Posted on by Alex Taylor

I’m very hap­py to have been a part of the work lead­ing up to a paper pre­sent­ed at Assets 2017, the ACM con­fer­ence on Acces­si­ble Com­put­ing. Report­ing on work from a group of us at Microsoft Research, the paper describes an ori­en­ta­tion to our stud­ies with the blind and vision impaired.

Ceci­ly Mor­ri­son, Edward Cutrell, Anu­pa­ma Dharesh­war, Kevin Doher­ty, Anja Thieme, and Alex Tay­lor. 2017. Imag­in­ing Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Appli­ca­tions with Peo­ple with Visu­al Dis­abil­i­ties using Tac­tile Ideation. In Pro­ceed­ings of the 19th Inter­na­tion­al ACM SIGACCESS Con­fer­ence on Com­put­ers and Acces­si­bil­i­ty (ASSETS ’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 81–90. DOI.

(more…)

Paper at 4S 2017

Posted on by Alex Taylor

I’m thrilled to have our paper sub­mis­sion accept­ed to the . Cyn­thia Ben­nett and I will be busi­ly prepar­ing our paper for the always amaz­ing event, this year in August/September in Boston.

A care for being
more (cap-)able

Cyn­thia Ben­nett and Alex Taylor

In this paper, we begin with Ingunn Moser’s and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s gen­er­a­tive notions of care and use them to expand how we under­stand capa­bil­i­ty. Draw­ing on field­work with blind and vision impaired peo­ple, we turn our atten­tion to a mate­ri­al­ly enact­ed, unfold­ing ‘sense-abil­i­ty’. This is a sens­ing that puts (cap)ability and care togeth­er, that under­stands ‘see­ing-in-the-world’ as a prac­ti­cal affair that is, at once, know­ing, effect­ing and affect­ing with oth­ers (humans or oth­er­wise). Thus, we show not only that care can con­test an ‘instru­men­tal­ism’ in forms of know­ing and doing—by ‘re-affect­ing objec­ti­fied worlds’ (Puig de la Bel­la­casa, 2011: 98)—but also give a greater clar­i­ty to how care can be, in prac­tice, entan­gled in prac­tice. This sense-abil­i­ty seeks to be active, enliven­ing how we become capa­ble; it is fig­ured to be worked with, not finite and dic­tat­ed by assumed bod­i­ly lim­its, but open to becom­ing-with and becom­ing-more. Bor­row­ing from Vin­ciane Despret, this sense-abil­i­ty is “to gain a body that does more things, that feels oth­er events, and that is more and more able…” (2004: 120).

Despret, V. (2004). The Body We Care For: Fig­ures of Anthro­po-zoo-gen­e­sis. Body & Soci­ety, 10(2–3), 111–134.
Moser, I. (2011). Demen­tia and the Lim­its to Life. ST&HV, 36(5), 704–722.
Puig de la Bel­la­casa, M. (2011). Mat­ters of Care in Techno­science. Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence, 41(1), 85–106.

4S is the Soci­ety for the Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence. The annu­al meet­ing details are here.

Do data publics work?

Posted on by Alex Taylor


I pre­sent­ed at the Data Publics con­fer­ence last week­end, at Lan­cast­er Uni­ver­si­ty. Got lots of help­ful feed­back to some ear­ly thoughts on publics (think­ing with some of my old favourites, Despret, Har­away, Mar­res, Stengers, etc.).
Pro­voked by Vin­ciane Despret’s “W for Work”, in “What would ani­mals say if we asked the right ques­tions?”, my start­ing point was the question:

Are we think­ing well
with data publics?

(more…)

Vin­ciane Despret (2016). W is for Work. In “What Would Ani­mals Say If We Asked the Right Ques­tions”. Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Press: 177–184.

Paper presented at 4S/EASST meeting

Posted on by Alex Taylor

At the com­bined 4S/EASST meet­ing this year, Sarah Kem­ber and I pre­sent­ed a paper titled:

Writer­ly (ac)counts of finite flour­ish­ings and pos­si­bly bet­ter ways of being together

As Sarah’s intro­duc­tion to the paper out­lined, our co-writ­ings were an attempt to think with the emerg­ing strate­gies of fem­i­nist count­ing, account­ing and re-counting.
Below, I present my part to the co-authered piece. It’s long, so I put it here more for the record than any expec­ta­tion it will be read. I must add that the ideas I present draw on work done by . With­out her ener­gy and always thought­ful invest­ment in the field site, this reflec­tion would not have been pos­si­ble: (more…)

… work­ing from Newcastle’s Open Lab