Knowing Me, Knowing Mo (ah haaaa)

This week’s blog will take a look at both my own research interests and those of my fellow coursemate, the wonderful Mo.

My research interests lie broadly in women’s health, reproductive rights and sexuality. My undergraduate Human Geography dissertation took me to Mississippi to explore the relationship between religiosity and sexuality in the region. The impact of state-mandated abstinence-only education policies on the sexual health, knowledge and rights of adolescents in the area was shocking and frustrating and sparked in me a desire to continue down this path in future research.

My Masters in Public Health allowed me to continue to focus on global women’s health issues from a feminist standpoint, undertaking my research into Female Genital Mutilation in a western context and the barriers to accessing marginalised and hidden diaspora communities. Upon completing this project, I tried my hand at writing a CHI paper that took these results and considered the opportunities for technology in overcoming some of these barriers.

One of the major barriers that arose from my research was stigma and taboo, not just for women who don’t undergo FGM within their own communities, but also from westerners who are ignorant to the complexities of this embedded cultural practice and as such condemn and vilify practising communities. Stigma is something that weaves itself through all of my research, past and present; I am currently involved in an ongoing collaborative design process with a local charity, Changing Lives, and their service users (sex workers and those who are sexually exploited).

In all of these contexts, the negative impact of stigma (and its subsequent othering and marginalisation) on health-seeking behaviour and access to support is both powerful and concerning. In considering the design space for technology and HCI to reduce and challenge stigma, I have become increasingly interested in the intersection of digital storytelling, digital narratives and crafting; all of which can provide creative outlets for the raising of marginalised voice and the sharing of real-life experiences.

More broadly, the impact of geography and culture on reproductive rights and women’s health presents major challenges all over the world and offers numerous opportunities for research and design, not least in HCI where traditionally women’s issues have been constrained to more traditional maternal health domains. Only in recent years has there been a shift towards design for women’s rights, sexuality and a surge in feminist HCI. Although pockets of great work are beginning to emerge, there remains a dearth in HCI work that focuses on violence against women, sexuality and pleasure and ICT for Inclusion and I hope to be able to continue to work in this space and contribute to a newly emerging area.

A paper that offers a good overview of sexuality in HCI is “How HCI talks about sexuality: discursive strategies, blind spots, and opportunities for future research” by Kannabiran et al.(2011).

Mo’s Interests

Mo, like most of us on the Digital Civics course, remains unsure about the specific direction that his Mres project will take. However, he knows that he would like to combine his passion and talent for music (he’s pretty nifty with the old Lute!) with his academic skills in computing (his background is in computer science and computer and communication engineering). He sees musical instruments as a possible interface and hopes to develop these ideas further into a project that looks at the application of music and computation to the digital civics agenda. Although where exactly this fits with digital civics remains unclear for Mo, further research into this crossover provides an exciting opportunity that is full of potential!

sMOuldering…

The paper I have found for Mo takes us back to last week’s blog posts on tangible and embodied computing. “BodyBeats: whole-body, musical interfaces for children” by Zigelbaum et al (2006), looks at the intersection of music and computation in relation to children’s learning and tangible interaction. I think the paper gives an interesting set of examples of potential applications for Mo’s crossover of interests with a more digital civics-specific angle.