Panel to discuss feminism, critical data studies and computer science

The Women, History and the Computer Revolution lecture panel will focus on critical data studies, feminist computing and whether science is universal and its teaching is free from the constraints of social norms and values as part of Women's History Month.

The panel, hosted by the Center for Trans-Institutional Capacity Building, TransSTEM and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, will be noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday (March 1) in the Hall for Discovery and Learning Research, Room 143AB. The event is free and open to the public.

Two Purdue faculty, Fatma Mili, director of the Center for Trans-Institutional Capacity Building, and Kendall Roark, assistant professor in libraries, will dissect examples from feminist engagements with art, technology and the field of computer science to analyze the assumption that science is not bound by social constraints.

Mili will speak on feminist computing and Roark will speak on critical data studies and its relation to feminist engagements with art and technology. Critical data studies is an emerging interdisciplinary space closely related to science and technology studies and information ethics.

Mili will examine the prevalent notions that science is universal, that its truths and methods are value-agnostic and that its teaching is cleanly decontextualized and insulated from social norms and values. She examines some of these ideas by looking at examples from the computer science subfields using the lens of feminist values.

For more information, contact Roark at roark6@purdue.edu or Mili at 765-496-7005.