2024 Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture: Repairing the Social Fabric with danah boyd

Sensorium is pleased to announce the upcoming Fall Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture: Repairing the Social Fabric, which will be given by leading technology and social media researcher danah boyd. boyd’s work explores sociality, identity and culture among youth on social networks. She is the founder of Data & Society Institute and a visiting professor at Georgetown University. The lecture will be held on Friday, December 13, 2024.

From the early days of online communities, many pundits envisioned a world where people could be more connected around the globe thanks to new technology. And yet, this is not the world that social media brought forth. After years of struggling with misinformation, political polarization, and rampant distrust in institutions, many have begun to wonder if social media might be fundamentally malevolent. Lost in conversations about algorithms is a discussion about the health of the social fabric itself. Building and sustaining relationships takes work. Rearranging the structural conditions in pursuit of equity cannot be automated. In this talk, danah will explore what is necessary to repair our collective social fabric and the role that networked technologies can play.

Date: Friday, December 13, 2024
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. (Reception to follow)
Location: Joe Green Studio Theatre
Admission: Free (Register HERE for your complimentary ticket)

The lecture is sponsored by the AMPD Dean’s Office, Wendy Michener Memorial Fund, Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, and the Facing Backlash Speaker Series, co-organized by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, Laura Levin, Keira Loughran, Jamie Robinson and Marlis Schweitzer. It is co-sponsored by the Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance.

The Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture will coincide with the AMPD-Sensorium Graduate Symposium, in which graduate students from across AMPD and beyond will present their research and participate in moderated dialogues to identify intersections in their work.