Dr. Tonia Sutherland has joined the team of AfterLab, along with the University of Washington’s iSchool’s Anna Lauren Hoffman, Marika Cifor, and Megan Finn.
, a new research group at the iSchool, is dedicated to thinking about what happens after 鈥 the aftermath of disasters, afterlives of personal data, after careful attempts at ethical governance of technologies fail, and even what happens to our digital artifacts after we鈥檙e gone. Rather than cranking out prototypes and papers, the lab takes a longer view, looking at information science from critical and social science perspectives to learn how the uses of information urgently affect different people, especially those who have long been marginalized or oppressed.
[…]Sutherland鈥檚 recent work has focused on what happens to people鈥檚 data after death, with an emphasis on what is archived and what is erased about the lives of Black people. She is the author of a forthcoming book on the topic,聽Digital Remains: Race and the Digital Afterlife聽(University of California Press, under contract).
Sutherland also brings an island perspective: 鈥淚slands and their infrastructures are particularly prone to the after-effects of continental policies and decision-making. Hawai驶i is often an afterthought, tacked onto the corner of the U.S. map in ways that tend to minimize the impact of its geolocation in one of the most remote parts of the Pacific. Bringing University of Hawai驶i students into the conversations we are having in AfterLab foregrounds this 鈥榓ftering鈥 in interesting and important ways,鈥 Sutherland said.
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