Speaker
Catherine D'Ignazio is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and the Director of the Data + Feminism Lab.
Title
Visualizing Inequality: What We Can Learn From Grassroots Data Activism
Abstract
In the face of social inequality, journalists and advocates are increasingly compiling their own datasets, analyzing them, and visualizing them to work towards social transformation. This talk presents an in-depth case study from Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024), a book about transnational data activism that is challenging the gender-related killings of women and girls. Grassroots activists document and visualize violence in ways that center care, memory, healing, and justice. This talk puts forth the argument that there are lessons to draw from their work for how to sensitively represent violence and inequality through data, most notably through employing alternative epistemological frameworks, embodied visual grammars, and strategic political calculations.
About the Speaker
Catherine D’Ignazio is a hacker mama, scholar, and artist/designer who focuses on feminist technology, data justice, and civic engagement. She has run women’s health hackathons, designed global news recommendation systems, created talking and tweeting water quality sculptures, and led walking data visualizations to envision the future of sea level rise. Her 2020 book from MIT Press, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science practices. Her second book, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024) is an extended case study about grassroots data activism to end gender-related violence. D’Ignazio is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT where she is the Director of the Data + Feminism Lab.