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#unsettle: The Periphery is Everywhere: Anthropologist Anita Say Chan, interviewed by Data & Society Events Producer Rigoberto Lara Guzmán & Communications Associate Natalie Kerby.

“The classroom, really, is a space that takes up a lot of commitments. It’s a space of sociality, a space of cultivation, a space of making new, a new generation, particularly in interdisciplinary fields. In critical data practice there is a special imperative for what it means to use the classroom space to regenerate a new version of feminist decolonial, anti-racist, anti-classist, data practitioners because they’re not getting it in so many of the other disciplinary spaces that are authorizing them to become data scientists.”

Community Data Clinic partners with Champaign County social services on 211 online directory

“Their partnership will result in a research project to inform a new online version of the 211 directory that connects people, based on locality, to dozens of crisis response and social services, including housing, mental health services, and food support. Funded by the United Way of Champaign County and Champaign County Mental Health Board, with a call center run by PATH in Bloomington, Illinois, 211—a service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year—provides information and referrals to 44 counties in the state, all at no cost and with anonymity to users.”

“‘Anita Say Chan, associate professor in the iSchool and the Department of Media and Cinema Studies, has been awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to spend three weeks at Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia. During her visit, which will take place in May 2020, Chan will lecture on feminist data methods and give a workshop on community data.'”

“‘I am also excited to be able to use the time to deepen my research on and with feminist data justice networks addressing feminicide and online gender-based harassment in the region,” Chan said. “Their research practices and outreach methods to extend the visibility of their data resources have undoubtedly been some of the most impactful cases that scholars have seen emerge in any global context.'”

“Emerging from ‘a long genealogy of feminist thinking and praxis,’ the Manifest-No occasions us to convene a diverse set of feminist scholars and researchers, artists and organizers, collaborators and conspirators. Together, we gather our voices and histories for a collaborative performance and collective reading of the first ten declarations from the Manifest-No.”

If you’re in New York, swing by Data & Society to join authors and organizers – Marika Cifor (U. of Washington -Seattle), Patricia Garcia (U. of Michigan-Ann Arbor), and Anita Say Chan (Data & Society) – for this collective reading.

Can’t make it? Feel free to organize your own collective reading from Manifest-No wherever you are, whenever you are.

Chan receives Fulbright Specialist grant

“Chan has been invited to visit Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia, for three weeks in May. She will meet with faculty in their new Doctorate in Communication, Languages, and Information program, present a lecture on feminist data methods, and give a workshop about community data. 

As a 2019-2020 Data & Society Faculty Fellow, Chan has been advancing research on civic technoscience and decolonial, feminist data collectives in Latin America that work to reconfigure dominant Western economic and cultural frameworks around big data via the fostering of local sites of intersectional and interdisciplinary data dialogues.”

Yiran Gao and Adrian Wong receive Global Intersections Grant

“The Center for Global Studies is pleased to announce the “Turning the Discursive Gaze Toward a Digital Center: Negotiations and Global Imaginaries surrounding Facial Recognition Across Weibo” project as a successful proposal and recipient of a Global Intersections Grant for Spring 2020. This project will be generously co-sponsored by CGS and Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies (CEAPS). The Global Intersections grant funding is provided through our U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.”

Chan receives Fiddler Innovation Faculty Fellowship

“Chan was awarded the fellowship in conjunction with the multidisciplinary Innovation Illinois Community Laboratory project, which is part of the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate Arts and Humanities. This project involves a series of interdisciplinary courses and the development of a lab space—the Community Data Clinic—at the NCSA where undergraduates from all disciplines imagine, research, and prototype social innovation projects that will become part of an expanding archive.“

Karahalios selected as a 2019 Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Member

“iSchool Karahalios is a leading expert in interactive and social computing, a field that explores the impact of computer mediation on human interactions and relationships. She has worked with speech and education professors to create visualization tools that help assess and aid autistic children and their parents. Karahalios is also at the forefront in examining the algorithms that tie us together and the ethics behind them, building interfaces to examine social media. Her award-winning 2015 study examining Facebook’s news feed has helped to spark an important discussion about algorithmic bias.”