Category: Presentations

Wakanda University 2019

Ditching techno-utopia, how might technology–widely imagined–play a role in anthropologies yet to come? What new forms of knowledge production can be birthed through performative play? How can epistemologies and experiences beyond whiteness shape (academic) cultures yet-to-be?  Can anti-racist research and making materialize spaces, technologies, and experiences that are enlivened by principles of afrofuturism, indigeneity, intuition, and collective well-being?

Cyborgs at the Frontiers

From Norbert Wiener’s hearing glove, to Clynes and Kline’s metabolically extended mouse, to cyborgs in science fiction, cyborgs figure centrally in speculating about how humans will transcend their bodies and the planet Earth for new frontiers of place, function, and sensation. This post is adapted from a talk given at the Transpecies Society in Barcelona, Spain in January 2019.

Cyborg Anthropology Webinar @ EPIC

On December 5, 2018, I gave a webinar on Cyborg Anthropology via EPIC, the leading professional organization for practicing anthropologists. Video of the webinar is archived and available to EPIC members.

Ethics and Access to Technology

On October 20, 2018, I led a panel discussion at the All Tech Is Human ethical tech summit in New York. We discussed why access to technology should be considered part of tech ethics and how not all forms of “access” are equally inclusive and socially beneficial. 

Wakanda University at AAA 2018

This year’s American Anthropology Association(AAA) theme is Resistance, Resilience, Adaptation. The Laboratory of Speculative Ethnology brings Wakanda University to the AAA as an embodiment of all three of these principles. Wakanda University at the AAA will be an ethnofuture space beyond whiteness that challenges anthropology from the ground up.

Moon Dust and Rainbows: Food, Health, and the Reproduction of Society

This talk offered a brief exploration of two contemporary food subcultures – that of instagram celebrities and that of the food allergy community. As technology-driven proposals about the future of food proliferate, the issue of what social forms they may reproduce should be problematized in innovation, research, and public discourse.

Drag in the Digital Age

Drag in the Digital Age is the first meet up of the QX Meetup group.

We’re meeting on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 from 7-9pm at Thoughtworks NYC (99 Madison Avenue, New York, NY). RSVP and more details through the event Meetup page.

#designfail at Nerd Nite NYC

Design is increasingly a dominant idiom for creation, innovation, research, and critique. But what makes a “good” design? Why do some designs draw public ire and mockery, while others go unnoticed or are embraced? The answers to these question are not just about the practice of design, but also our ethical commitments to common social goods.