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Dear all,

(With apologies for cross-posting.) Please join us on *Wednesday, March
11th at 12–1:30pm in 90 Snell Library* for a talk by Lauren Klein of Emory
University and Catherine D’Ignazio of MIT, discussing their new book: *Data
Feminism <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism>*. The book is an
exciting new way of looking at data science and data ethics as well as
strategies for data scientists for incorporating feminism towards
justice-oriented goals.

The event details are below—please see the event page and attached flyer
for full details:
https://web.northeastern.edu/nulab/event/klein-dignazio/.

*Book Description:*
Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose
injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also
been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on
the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data
science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests
in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly
white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D’Ignazio and
Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data
ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.

Illustrating data feminism in action, D’Ignazio and Klein show how
challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical
(and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for
example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective
data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the
significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show
why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.”

Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how
feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to
focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism
is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who
doesn’t, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and
changed.

*Biography:*
Lauren Klein <https://lklein.com/> is an Associate Professor in the English
and Quantitative Theory and Methods Departments at Emory University and the
Director of the Digital Humanities Lab <https://dhlab.lmc.gatech.edu/>. Her
research explores the intersections of history, race, and data science. Her
current projects include Data by Design
<https://dhlab.lmc.gatech.edu/data-by-design/>, an interactive history of
data visualization and Vectors of Freedom
<https://dhlab.lmc.gatech.edu/tome/vectors-of-freedom/>, a project
exploring quantitative methods in the archive of the abolitionist movement
in the US.

Catherine D’Ignazio <http://www.kanarinka.com/> is the Director of the Data
+ Feminism Lab <http://www.kanarinka.com/project/data-feminism/> and an
Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT. Her research
explores creative ways to democratize data science for social justice,
including public art and design projects, feminist hackathons, and data
storytelling workshops. 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.

This event is free and open to the public, but if you are not a member of
the Northeastern community, please email Sarah Connell,
[log in to unmask], to register.

Lastly, please take a moment and share this information with anyone who may
be interested.

We hope to see you there!

Kind Regards,
Laura Johnson

-- 
*Laura Johnson (she/her)*
Ph.D. Student, English
Coordinator, NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks
<https://web.northeastern.edu/nulab/>
Northeastern University

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