[IRIS] Special Issue CfP: Feminist and Queer Approaches to ICT4D

Mon Dec 6 12:53:53 EST 2021

Dear Colleagues,

Hope you are well! Please find below a Special Issue Call for Papers on Feminist and Queer Approaches to ICT4D, for the journal Information Technology for Development, which may be of interest. The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2022.

The Call for Papers can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LzIVzcTNWReu7uW4ug-1iWUjQtSQPCYD

All the best!

Silvia (with co-editors)

Special Issue Call for Papers:
Feminist and Queer Approaches to ICT4D

Information Technology for Development<https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/titd20/current>

Submission Deadline: 30 June 2022

Guest Editors:
‘
Sara Vannini, University of Sheffield, s.vannini at sheffield.ac.uk<mailto:s.vannini at sheffield.ac.uk>
Silvia Masiero, University of Oslo, silvima at ifi.uio.no<mailto:silvima at ifi.uio.no>
Ayushi Tandon, Mahindra University, ayushi.tandon at mahindrauniversity.edu.in<mailto:ayushi.tandon at mahindrauniversity.edu.in>
Charmaine Wellington, University of Sussex, cwellington at sussex.ac.uk<mailto:cwellington at sussex.ac.uk>
Katherine Wyers, University of Oslo, katherwy at ifi.uio.no<mailto:katherwy at ifi.uio.no>
Kristin Braa, University of Oslo, kbraa at ifi.uio.no<mailto:kbraa at ifi.uio.no>

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many sectors globally to move online. Activities related to work, education, and entertainment have drastically increased their digital presence. The stronger reliance on digital practices, while assisting some, has perpetuated and amplified many of the existing historic inequalities generated by the legacy of colonial, racist, classist and sexist societal structures. Combined with the already ongoing processes of democracy erosion, increased disregard for human rights as it has been, for example, in most countries’ politics towards migrants and the Black Lives Matter protests (Gomes, 2020), disinformation campaigns, and attacks to science, increased isolation and digitization are exacerbating the vulnerability of the most marginalized and oppressed in society (Qureshi, 2021).

Recent evidence has shown how the pandemic has brought especially harmful consequences along gendered lines. First, gender-based violence has increased during the pandemic (IOM, 2020). Second, gender affects the burden of unpaid care work, which has become even more pervasive. Third, given the likelihood to be discriminated against in their professional and personal lives, LGBTQIA+ people have also been found to not having their basic necessities met during the pandemic: they generally have lower-income jobs that do not allow for remote-working, they may be estranged from their family of origins, and they may have trouble accessing gender-affirming healthcare – essential to their health and well-being but often delayed as considered non-essential during the crisis (Katz-Wise, 2020). In the light of adverse digital incorporation (Heeks, 2021), initiatives to help alleviate some of the challenges that communities are facing during these times are likely to be led by care workers, a position that is usually gender-influenced (IOM, 2020; Malcom and Sawani, 2020).

Studies in and beyond the field of ICT4D do recognize the relevance of fighting inequalities, leveraging on ICTs to do so, but also critically analyze their role in perpetrating or dismantling power. Furthermore, issues of gender herein have been mostly treated as a binary category (men vs women) to be incorporated into pre-existing systems designed within existing patriarchal structures of power (Hentschel et al., 2016; Sultana et al., 2018). There is a pressing need for research in the ICT4D field that challenges existing power structures, including adopting a critical and feminist approach to gender (Kumar et al., 2019; Spiel et al., 2019); proposing perspectives that dismantle existing structures of oppression (hooks, 2014); investigating the design of new, disruptive ICTs/IS by vulnerable and marginalized groups (DeVito et al., 2020; Perez, 2019; Webb & Buskens, 2014). We invite papers that tackle these themes through a critical, feminist lens, encouraging decolonial approaches (Ali, 2014; Bidwell et al., 2016).

Paper topics include, but are not limited to:

  *   Papers employing a feminist/queer theoretical lens to investigate Social Implications of ICTs/IS in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections;

  *   Information literacy practices in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections informed by feminist/queer frameworks;

  *   ICTs and human rights responses/practices informed by feminist/queer frameworks;

  *   Data privacy and security issues in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections informed by feminist/queer frameworks;

  *   Implications of ICTs/IS on gender identities in the Global South, and its geographical reach and/or cross-border digital flows;

  *   Other papers using Southern Feminism/feminist/queer frameworks applied to Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries.

Ali, M. (2014). Towards a decolonial computing. In: Ambiguous Technologies: Philosophical Issues, Practical Solutions, Human Nature, International Society of Ethics and Information Technology, pp. 28-35.
Bidwell, N. J., Hussan, T. S., Gill, S., Awori, K., & Lindtner, S. (2016). Decolonising Technology Design. Proceedings of the First African Conference on Human Computer Interaction, pp. 256–259.
DeVito, M. A., Walker, A. M., Lustig, C., Ko, A. J., Spiel, K., Ahmed, A. A., Allison, K., Scheuerman, M., Dym, B., Brubaker, J.R. .. & Gray, M. L. (2020, April). Queer in HCI: Supporting LGBTQIA+ Researchers and Research Across Domains. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-4.
Gomes, S. (2020). Brazilian counter-surveillance collective action in a data sensitive era. Datactive Blog, https://data-activism.net/2020/06/bigdatasur-brazilian-counter-surveillance-collective-action-in-a-data-sensitive-era/.
Heeks, R. (2021). From Digital Divide to Digital Justice in the Global South: Conceptualising Adverse Digital Incorporation. Proceedings of the First IFIP 9.4 Virtual Conference, 26-28 May 2021.
Hentschel, J., Ahmed, S. I., Hussain, F., Ahmed, N., & Kumar, N. (2017, November). Working with Women in ICTD. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (pp. 1-5).

hooks,  bell. (2014). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (3 edition). Routledge.

IOM, International Organization for Migration. (2020). COVID-19 Analytical Snapshot: Gender dimensions (No. 25; Understanding the Migration & Mobility Implications of COVID-19). UN Migration. <https://www.iom.int/covid19> https://www.iom.int/covid19

Katz-Wise, S. L. (2020, April 30). COVID-19 and the LGBTQ+ community: Rising to unique challenges. Harvard Health Blog. <https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/covid-19-and-the-lgbtq-community-rising-to-unique-challenges-2020043019721> https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/covid-19-and-the-lgbtq-community-rising-to-unique-challenges-2020043019721

Kumar, N., Karusala, N., Ismail, A., Wong-Villacres, M., & Vishwanath, A. (2019). Engaging Feminist Solidarity for Comparative Research, Design, and Practice. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1-24.

Malcom, K., Sawani, J. (2020). Racial Disparities in the Time of COVID-19. Michigan University Health Lab. <https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/racial-disparities-time-of-covid-19> https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/racial-disparities-time-of-covid-19.

Perez, C. C. (2019). Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (First Printing edition). Harry N. Abrams.

Qureshi, S. (2021). Pandemics within the pandemic: confronting socio-economic inequities in a datafied world. Information Technology for Development, 27(2), 151-170.

Spiel, K., Keyes, O., & Barlas, P. (2019). Patching gender: Non-binary utopias in HCI. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-11.

Sultana, S., Guimbretière, F., Sengers, P., & Dell, N. (2018, April). Design within a patriarchal society: Opportunities and challenges in designing for rural women in Bangladesh. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

Webb, D. A., & Buskens, D. I. (Eds.). (2014). Women and ICT in Africa and the Middle East: Changing Selves, Changing Societies. Zed Books.

Timeline
Deadline for submission: June 30, 2022
Notification of decision: September 30, 2022
Deadline for revised papers: December 30, 2022
Notification of final acceptance: February 28, 2023
Tentative publication date: June 2023

Submission

Submission website: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/itd

Please select “Special Issue – Feminist and Queer Approaches to ICT4D” in the submission process

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