This research cluster is an outcome of fruitful cross-disciplinary cooperation between the three co-researchers with backgrounds in gender studies, ethnology, informatics, and applied IT. Together with two PhD-students, we constitute the core group of this research cluster. The work of the core group is enriched by an international and interdisciplinary network.
Key members contribute to the cluster by participating in special issues co-edited by team members and by participating in the three Cluster Workshops, PhD-Courses and Research Visits. If you are interested in joining our activities, please contact us at the e-mail address: technactx@gmail.com
Adi Kuntsman
Senior Lecturer in Digital Politics at Manchester Metropolitan University
Their current work focuses on selfies between political activism and biometric governance; the politics of ‘opting out’ of digital communication; futures of digital memory; and environmental impacts of digital technologies.
Cathy Urquhart
Professor of Digital Business at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
Her research interests centre around the use of digital innovation for societal good. She is interested in how social media and all forms of ICTs can help us meet societal challenges, such as sustainable development, individual well being, and social justice. She also has a strong interest in the use of grounded theory and other qualitative research methods, and has written extensively on this topic.
Website: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/business-school/about-us/our-staff/otehm/profile/index.php?id=899
Katherine Harrison
Senior lecturer of gender studies at the Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University
Her main focus is how bodily and identity norms re/produce in the code and content of digital media technologies. Her current research projects are Sustainability means inclusivity: engaging citizens in early-stage smart city development (2020-2022) and Robotic care practices: Creating trust, empathy, and accountability in human-robot encounters (2020-2024).
Ericka Johnson
Professor of gender and society at the Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University
Her research interests include the robot body and the simulated body, medical technologies, pharmaceuticals, and the production of anatomical knowledge about the (sometimes) healthy subject and body. She is currently leading the Bodies Hub, a collaborative research environment that explores tensions between the social and medical body. She is the author of Refracting through technologies. Seeing and untangling bodies, medical technologies, and discourses (2019) and Gendering Drugs. Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals (2017).
Francis Lee
Works in the interdisciplinary tradition of Science and Technology Studies. Their primary research interest is focused on social and cultural aspects of digitalization and knowledge production. Lee’s work draws on sociology, media studies, anthropology, history of science, and cultural studies.
Coppélie Cocq
Professor at University of Helsinki
Senior lecturer in Sami studies at Umeå University as well as nordic folklore at Åbo Academy, where she specializes in minority studies. Since January 2019, she is off duty from Umeå University and currently works as a professor at University of Helsinki, where she specializes in ethnology.
Catharina Landström
Senior lecturer at the Division for Science, Technology and Society (STS) at Chalmers University of Technology
Her main focus lies on questions regarding the environment. Her field of research is how digitalization affects knowledge regarding environmental science, and how it impacts society at large.
Matilda Åkerlund
Ph.D. student at the Department of Sociology, Umeå University
She is the author of The importance of influential users in (re)producing Swedish far-right discourse on Twitter (2020) and Representations of trans people in Swedish newspapers (2019).
Matilda Tudor
Media phenomenologist
Media phenomenologist working in the intersections of existential media studies and critical theory, particularly focusing on feminist and queer perspectives. She has been exploring the existential implications of living with and through digital media among sexual minorities in Russia, developing an original framework for a queer digital media phenomenology. Currently, she is working on digital-human vulnerabilities in relation to biometric AI.
Hamid Pousti
Lecturer in Information Systems and researcher at the Swinburne University of Technology
His research interests include data analytics in healthcare, digital health, community resilience, IS resilience, and the success and failure of IT projects in organizations.
Nisrine Chaer
Ph.D. student in Gender Studies at the University of Utrecht
Jenny Sundén
Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Karlstad University, as well as Professor of Gender Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm
Her work is situated in the intersection of digital media studies, gender and sexuality studies, feminist and queer theory, and affect theory. She is currently working on digital intimacy, disconnection, and delay; feminist social media tactics that use humor to counter sexism by rewiring the dynamics of shame, shaming, and shamelessness; and the geographies of desire in digital sexual cultures across Nordic, Baltic, and Anglo-American contexts. She is the author of Who’s Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (MIT Press, 2020, with Susanna Paasonen), and Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures: Passionate Play(Routledge, 2012, with Malin Sveningsson).
Evelina Liliequist
Ph.D. in Ethnology, Digital Humanities at the Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University
Dissertation project: Digital connections: space, bearing and queer orientations. The aim of the project is to study LGBTQ peoples use of social media and how this relates to queer orientations. In the dissertation, questions about when experiences are made, and where they are made are important. Particular interest is focused on time and geographical location, mainly focusing on the north of Sweden.
Pat Treusch
Research fellow at Berlin Technical University
Treusch has a binational doctorate in sociology (Technical University of Berlin, TU Berlin) and gender studies (Linköping University). Her PhD-thesis from 2015 is titled Robotic Companionship. The Making Of Anthropomatic Kitchen Robots in Queer Feminist Technoscience Perspective. Recently, Treusch finalized the project “Do Robots Dream of Knitting?” (2018-2019). In this project, Treusch was leading an interdisciplinary research team to realize human-robot collaboration through knitting in a robotics lab. Based on the findings in this project, Treusch published the book Robotic Knitting (2020) with transcript verlag.
Naila Sahar
Assistant Professor in the English department at Forman Christian College (A chartered University), Lahore
Did her PhD as a Fulbright scholar at the State University of New York, Buffalo in the department of English. The topic of her Ph.D. dissertation is Reimagining Muslim women: Gendered Religious Life and Resistance in the Age of Islamophobia. Her research interests include Feminist studies, Gender studies, Gendered religious nationalism, South Asian studies, and postcolonial studies. Her work has appeared in South Asian Voices, South Asian Review, Gender Matters, and Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. These days she is working as Assistant Professor in the English department at Forman Christian College (A Chartered University), Lahore.
Liu Xin
Postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki and is affiliated with the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki and the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of Gothenburg. Liu Xin has published in journals such as Journal of Environmental Media, Parallax, Australian Feminist Studies, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, Girlhood Studies, NORA, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, Sukupuolentutkimus-Genusforskning, Feminist Encounters: A journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, and has forthcoming articles in Feminist Review, Media Theory Journal and Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Her recent research projects are located in the intersection of environmental humanities, social theory, political economy, digital media research, and feminist theory.
Mahya Ostovar
Assistant professor of Management-Information Systems at Paris School of Business
She has studied for her Ph.D. at ESSEC Business School. Her research interests include the role of technology in organizing, social media, and online identity.
Olgerta Tona
Associate senior lecturer at the department of Applied IT at the University of Gothenburg
She received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from Lund University in 2017. Olgerta’s research focuses on the digitalization of personal data and the use of data analytics in organizations. She has taught Business Intelligence, Human-Computer Interaction, and Decision Support Systems.
Esperanza Miyake
Ph.D. Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University
Ph.D. lecturer in the critical analyses of gender, race, and technology in popular culture and practices in everyday life at the Manchester Metropolitan University.
Svitlana Babenko
Head of Kyiv Unit of Sociological Association of Ukraine as well as Associate Research Fellow, Department of Sociology and Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, Sweden
She received her Ph.D. in Sociology and is an Associate Professor (Docent) at Social Structures and Social Relations Department, Head of MA program Gender Studies with double degree with Lund University, Sweden, and at Faculty of Sociology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. She is the author of about 50 academic publications. Her recent research projects are World Bank «PISA», Research “Social Impact Analysis of a Big Company Retrenchment” (2020-21); “Masculinities in Transition. Comparative Study in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Egypt (IDS)” in Sussex University, Great Britain (2018); and “Mental Health of Internally Displaced People and population of Ukraine (2017-18).
İrem İnceoğlu
Associate Professor and Head at PR and Information Department, Kadir Has University, Istanbul
Dr. İrem İnceoğlu is interested in new media technologies and the communication culture. Her work focuses on gender representation in popular culture, youth and media technologies as well as political communication and discourse analysis. She is the co-author of “Gender Equality in TV Series Research Report” (TUSIAD, 2018). She was the principal investigator of the nationwide research project titled “An Analysis of New Media and Cultural Practices of Youth in Turkey” (2019-2021) and is currently part of ongoing national research projects namely “Women on Screen and Behind the Camera: A Contemporary Outlook to Representation and Labour of Women in Film and TV Industries in Turkey (2017-2021)” and “The Analysis of Turkish Youth’s Mate Selection Practices via Location Based Mobile Dating Applications”.