Zoom: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/88955073859?pwd=YUg5TFFHTXZqUVBiZngrS3RLaW84Zz09
Abstract:
My research focuses on the global and historical problem of denial and misrecognition of marginalized groups' history, identity, faith, and cultural values in technology design. Building on postcolonial and subaltern scholarship, I define “recognition” as a collaborative social instrument that validates marginalized communities in a multicultural society by ensuring justice for them, honoring their values, and acknowledging their identities. To this end, my interdisciplinary research program focuses on “designing for recognition”. I extend the postcolonial theories of recognition to computer sciences and build technologies using participatory, adversarial, and ludic design strategies. While my definition of “recognition” could apply to many other computing domains, my work has so far involved mobile and web computing, crowdsourcing, and social media interventions. My seven-year-long research program includes conducting ethnography to study how marginalized communities conceptualize and fight for their recognitions in and over computing technologies, and developing and designing systems and applications co-designing with them. I address the challenges of achieving recognition of marginalized communities through three broad design principles: transformative, bypassing, and polysemic design, which I will present in detail in my talk.
Bio:
Sharifa is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Information Science at Cornell University. Her areas of expertise lie at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD), a growing area of study that focuses on the interplay between global development and technologies.
Sharifa’s research focuses on studying and building computing technologies for recognizing the identities and values of and justice with marginalized communities. She deploys a variety of qualitative, quantitative, and design methodologies to probe and address social justice agendas in low-resource, marginalized communities. Over her PhD, she has conducted several long-term ethnographic field studies in Bangladesh to reveal the challenges that rural populations and minorities face, and built computing technologies to improve the quality of their lives. She employs critical social science theories in building computing systems that relate to understanding and overcoming the challenges of marginalization, oppression, and injustice. She has published the results of her work at top-tier conferences such as ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, and ACM ICTD. Her work has received a best paper award, a best paper honorable mention, and a diversity and inclusion recognition. She is a recipient of the Facebook Fellowship, and she won multiple grants on collaborative projects funded by Meta and the Bangladesh ICT Ministry.
Faculty Host: Hari Sundaram
Meeting ID:889 5507 3859 ; Password: csillinois
