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April/May 2023 How would you write the recipe for a feminist research lab? |
Hi there, First of all, apologies for the delay. This newsletter was supposed to go out a week ago, but in all honesty the big energy-crash after a very energy intensive April with our feminist hackathon hit me hard. Which made me think of a post-it note I’ve had on my monitor in my office since last summer: How would you write the recipe for a feminist research lab? It’s something I’ve come to think of a lot again recently, given that I have had to explain again and again what ETHOS is and what constitutes a feminist lab. In some shape, it’s also a question we often bring up internally in the lab. What should be the shape/focus/driver in the lab? What is it that brings us together as a community? How do we organise ourselves and what is important? I think if I were to write the recipe for a feminist lab, the ingredients list would look a little something like this:
• A handful of feminists (add as many as can fit)
• A solid dose of care
• Comfortable furniture (you will often have to stay with the trouble, so might as well have a comfy seat)
• Materials (so that you’re always able to close all your screens and get crafting)
• Space for flexibility, pivots, reflections, contestations, and a change of plans
• A library (to build a shared knowledge base together)
• …
I’ll keep the list like this for now - a work in progress. But I would love to offer this as an invitation to readers of this newsletter who perhaps also find themselves in a feminist lab or another form of feminist organisation: I would love to hear from you and hear what you would add to this recipe!
Until next time ~ - Henriette We’d always love to hear your feedback on the newsletter. Reach us here: ethos@itu.dk |
Breaking and Making Code Poems: Launch party
On Friday, March 31st, extended friends of ETHOS gathered in the lab for the launch of our code poetry chapbook entitled “Breaking and Making Code Poems.” The event served as a lovely in-person reunion for alumni of the lab who contributed with editing, writing, and poems for the chapbook. Merethe Gjørding, formerly ETHOS Lab manager, joined us from Aarhus where she is pursing a PhD at DPU. Mace Ojala visited from his research position at Bochum’s RUSTLab. And Winnie Soon joined online from their new institutional home at the University of Arts London. Rachel Douglas-Jones, currently on sabbatical, joined from the farthest afield, zooming in from New Zealand. We began with a performance from Winnie of their code poem “Queering Bash.” Merethe and Edith spoke about how experimenting with code poetry created openings and new perspectives on technical world-making of software. Mace prompted us to consider how the expertise of coding and poetry interpenetrate in code poetry and challenged our assumptions that poetry, and especially “code for poets,” can undermine the expertise of writing poetry that is assumed to be somehow less than that of code. We read some poems and toasted the completion of another chapbook to add to the ETHOS Lab’s now three volumes of poetry! If you would like to receive a copy of the Chapbook, please contact ethos@itu.dk |
Top: (on screen) Winnie Soon and (in the room) Marisa Cohn and Mace Ojala.
Bottom: Merethe Gjørding and Edith Terte Andersen. |
Final Pitch & Play with the Junior Researchers
On April 18th we gathered in the lab one last time to pitch and play and feedback with this year’s junior researchers. The students have been working with such a wide range of topics this year, and it’s been such a joy to follow their research and development. Beyond that the cohort has really managed to use each other for support in their JR projects and beyond. We look forward to reading their final blogposts in the early summer. Once again a big thanks to this year’s ETHOS Junior Researchers: Emilie Mørch Groth, Chris Aftzidis, Tristan Vonet, Louie Meyer, Johanne Engel Aaen, Ahmet Akkoc, and Paula Victoria Menshikoff. |
JR Emilie Mørch Groth presenting her project at the final Pitch & Play. |
Feminist Futures Copenhagen hackathon 2023
As mentioned in the intro to this newsletter, the hackathon is the culprit that delayed this month’s newsletter. However, it was for good reason. |
Photo by Frederik Højfeldt. The Feminist Futures Copenhagen hackathon 2023 was, if I may say so myself, a banging success. We were so thrilled to see so many bright, thoughtful, helpful and hopeful individuals come together around this initiative. From organising volunteers, to participants and partners, it was all a joint effort. It’s hard to put into words exactly how wonderful it was to follow the participants in their journeys as well as watching their final presentations and exhibitions at the Showcase at SPACE10 on Friday 28th. |
Photo by Frederik Højfeldt. On the website we’re sharing some resources which might be useful to others, and if you’re interested in learning more about the projects that came out of the hackathon as well as future initiatives from the group, I recommend you follow along on our Instagram: @feministfuturescph. We will likely also be sharing more reflections on the ETHOS blog once the dust has settled. Once again, a big big thanks to everyone involved! |
Photo by Frederik Højfeldt. |
The risk of the proposed Swedish census
On the other side of Øresund, in Malmö, Baki Cakici has recently published an opinion piece in Sydsvenskan regarding the recently proposed census: “Based on scientific research, we are surprised that the Swedish government and the Sweden Democrats intend to push through a population census for Sweden based on new methods, write Baki Cakici, associate professor at the IT University in Copenhagen, and Hanna Sjögren, associate senior lecturer in pedagogy at Malmö University.”
Read the full piece here. |
Workshop on May 3rd: Temporarily uni-employed? You are not alone
*** Since this newsletter was meant to go out a week ago, this point was supposed to be promotional. That is less relevant now… However, we thank Flexwerker for reaching out nonetheless, and for doing this important work. Are you temporarily employed at a university or university college? Well, you are not alone. Far from it, in fact! Come and meet others like you and dive into a few hours of creative resistance. A survey carried out by DM, shows that almost half of university positions are temporary posts. Half! This has implications of course: for the mental health of the employees, for their finances and for the research and education carried out by the universities. Disheartening, we can easily agree. For this reason, DM has invited the cooperative Flexwerker to facilitate a workshop targeting members in temporary positions at the Danish universities and university colleges. And ETHOS Lab are partnering to provide a venue for the workshop. This is what Flexwerker says about the workshop: »This workshop is about reminding ourselves that we are not the problem: The problem is the structures. And we have to collectively remember the old school thoughts of organising that the unions - and we as members - have forgotten. We have to carry out creative resistance, just like when the labour movement started.« The workshop is inspired by the women's movement and their three-level model of organising: awareness - criticism - action. |
NOSTS 2023
The lab will be well-represented at NOSTS this years with members of the lab leading/participating in the following sessions: Demonstrating Disruption, (Un)timely Endings: Negotiating Sociotechnical relations in their unmaking, Sociotechnical Data Studies, and Who is Femtech for? Intersectional Interventions panel. |
Random highlights from the blog
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By Luis Landa I had to recently do a lecture for the class Navigating Complexity and the topic was visualisations. Since I was going to use a lot of examples that showcase the diverse uses, messages, and possibilities of visualisations, I tried to google “visualisations” which of course resulted in an endless sight of bar charts, line charts, pie charts …
Read more. |
As we alluded to in our final ETHOS Lab newsletter of 2022, we left the year on a strange tone; a hopeful tone but a strange tone nevertheless. At the beginning of 2022 we were emerging from two years of on-again, off-again pandemic lockdowns and it set the scene for a routine of welcomes and farewells across the year. In …
Read more. |
Illustration: Lehel Kovacs By Johanne Engel Aaen, Junior Researcher On a Saturday in October I am sitting at home, in my bed, getting ready to watch a YouTube video. Nothing out of the ordinary in that scenario. Still, I am having this particular YouTube-session for a reason. I’ve been postponing it for some time, everyday struggles of being …
Read more. |
By Marisa Cohn What does it mean to act as “a lab”? This has been a fundamental question we have faced as a collective of researchers and as an institutional unit within the University. This pertains to the question of our ambitions and our remit. The lab has always been many things - a workers’ collective every Wednesday to discuss …
Read more. |
ETHOS Lab Open Hours The Lab has regular opening hours throughout the semester on Tuesdays 10:00-11:30 & Thursdays from 11 to 14, allowing for a lunch break around noon. The opening hours are co-working time for the Lab staff, as well as an opportunity for impromptu meetings and informal encounters for the community of faculty and students. This is an opening for bouncing off ideas, getting feedback, and work in the Lab. Everyone is welcome, just pop by! |
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