Knowledge from the Margins: Users, Producers and Technology Choice

Project 1: Circulating Sciences From Below (Wrapping Up)

I am working on my first book which describes community ophthalmology NGOs in South Asia and East Africa. These professionals are re-inventing surgical sciences and ophthalmic technologies, and creating new hospital management techniques in order to fight avoidable blindness worldwide. I am using Innovation Studies theory (socio-technical regimes and multi-level perspective) as well as critical theory from Feminist Technology Studies, and  Political Sociology of Science & Technology to explain: (1) how appropriate technology choices are made collectively; and (2) the processes by which these innovations circulate throughout the world – to the benefit of both low-income patients and global modern science.

Professorial Assistant: Georgia Artzberger

Conference: Knowledge from the Margins Social Justice and Sustainability

I chaired a conference at Michigan State University from August 18-19, 2015 Knowledge from the Margins: Social Justice and Sustainability. The MSU Libraries will host the conference digital repository which went live sometime in July 2016 thanks to the work of librarian Robin Dean. Others whose work helped make the repository possible include: librarian Hailey Mooney, digital curator Sebastian Mercier, videographer Ken Nelson, photographers Aerika Williams and Melanie Kroll, and conference participants who created the papers and presentations.

Project 2: Blind Users and Everyday Technologies (Preliminary)

My second project involves participatory action research with photographers trained in sensory photography. Together these participants (persons with blindness and low vision) and I articulated and tried to answer a research question about technology as an obstacle or an aid. This project is being conducted in the U.S. It uses the photovoice methodology.

Project 3: Gender, Environment and ICT4D (Ongoing)

Project 3 involves analyzing the gender role of women in the design, production and use of information and communications technologies for international development. In the first part of this project, I have examined the likelihood of a proposed collaboration between scientists and rural women in the Indian Ocean region to increase women's access/recognition/participation in development, where the women are involved in participatory sensing using mobile phones. In the second part of this project, I am examining civil society organizations' potential ability to encourage sustainable technology production and consumption choices among other non-profit and for-profit organizations. These influential civil society organizations are interested in decreasing the accumulation of electronic waste (e-waste) which negatively (and primarily) causes environmental health harms to women and children in the global south.

Project 4: Gender and Socio-technical System Change (Preliminary)

Description coming soon.

Research Assistant: Charmonique Maye

Mock-up book cover design for Interlocking Innovations (Created by Logan D. A. Williams 2017)

Mock-up book cover design for Aravind Girls Civilize the South (Created by Logan D. A. Williams 2017)