February 28, Decolonial Practices in Digital Ethnography
Please join the Rutgers Digital Ethnography Working Group (DEWG) for our upcoming online panel, Decolonial Practices in Digital Ethnography: Reframing Approaches, Expanding Horizons.
This panel seeks to explore decolonial perspectives and practices in digital ethnography by interrogating dominant frameworks, challenging entrenched hierarchies, and reimagining the possibilities of collaborative, inclusive, and contextually grounded research. What does it mean to democratize digital ethnography? How can we foster epistemic justice in the face of global inequities? How do marginalized communities challenge and negotiate power structures via digital platforms? The panel brings together scholars and researchers from different fields to discuss how they implement decolonial approaches to their practices of digital ethnography. RSVP
This event will be co-moderated by Melissa Aronczyk, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University and the co-chair of the DEWG, Jeff Lane, Professor of Communication at Rutgers University, and Bahareh Badiei, Ph.D. Candidate in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University.
Panelists:
Dr. Katrien Pype associate professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven University (Belgium), has been studying Kinshasa’s media worlds since 2003. Her monograph, The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama. Media, Religion, and Gender in Kinshasa (Berghahn 2012), is an ethnography of the production of evangelizing television serials in Kinshasa; as Kinshasa’s society digitized, Katrien's attention turned more and more towards social media, digital innovations, and smart city developments. She has published about these issues, and co-edited among others the OA book Cryptopolitics. Exposure, Concealment and Digital Media (Berghahn Books 2023, with Victoria Bernal and Daivi Rodima-Taylor), and the forthcoming The Post-Global City. Theorizing Technology Cultures in Urban Africa (University of Michigan Press, OA, 2026). Together with Sasha Newell, she co-edited a special section (forum) for the journal African Studies Review entitled "Decolonizing the virtual: future knowledges and the extrahuman in Africa" (2021). Together with Dr Leah Junck, she coordinates the Commission for Digital Anthropology for the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences; and together with Lotte Hoek, Erkan Saka, Tom McDonald and John Postill, she coordinates the Anthropology of Media subgroup for the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA). Katrien supervises PhD and postdoctoral research at KU Leuven and at the Université de Kinshasa (RD Congo) on a wide variety of themes, among others on nature in the smartification of Brussels (Dra Gloria Michiels), Parisian elderly and their participation in the digitalization of the French state (Dra Sophie Colas), the digital economy in Lagos (Dr Davide Cascione), ecomedia and climate urgency in Nairobi (Dra Rebecca Campbell), and transnational matrimony in Kinshasa and its diasporas (Drs Sébastien Maluta-Makaya, in co-supervision). She is currently leading several research projects among others on climate urgency, and green innovation.
Dr. Cindy Tekobbe is Assistant Professor of Critical Feminist Science & Technology at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She is dual appointed in Gender; Women’s Studies (GWS) and Communication. Her work investigates the digital lives, identities, and activism practices of traditionally underserved and erased peoples and communities. She has publications in journals like, Present Tense, Enculturation, the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, First Monday, and Information, Communication & Society. Her book, forthcoming from the University Press of Colorado, is titled Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces. She serves on the Executive Committee for the Association of Internet Research (AoIR) and is the acting co-chair of the Indigenous Caucus of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (4Cs). She is an ICQCM Scholar. Cindy was born and raised in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, graduating from Arizona State University with degrees in English and Rhetoric, Writing and Linguistics. Prior to arriving at UIC, Cindy researched and taught in the Composition, Rhetoric and English Studies (CRES) program at the University of Alabama. She is a citizen of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Dr. Leah Junck is a Senior Researcher and Digital Anthropologist at the Global Center on AI Governance/African Observatory on Responsible AI (South Africa). Her interest in technologies - and what it means to be human in the age of AI - has sharpened over years of living and working in South Africa. Leah's work includes exploring human-technology experiences and how they sit in conversation with structural frameworks and the broader public discourse. It also includes thinking through ways of bringing contextual discussions to the relevant tables of decision-making. Overall, Leah’s work is shaped by the conviction that a more inclusive framing of critical digital literacy/expertise is crucial for mitigating the challenges of AI and honing in on its opportunities. She is the author of Cultivating Suspicion: An Ethnography (2019) and Like a Bridge Over Trouble: An Ethnography on Strategies of Bodily Navigation of Male Refugees in Cape Town (2018).
Please join the Rutgers Digital Ethnography Working Group (DEWG) for our upcoming online panel, Decolonial Practices in Digital Ethnography: Reframing Approaches, Expanding Horizons.
This panel seeks to explore decolonial perspectives and practices in digital ethnography by interrogating dominant frameworks, challenging entrenched hierarchies, and reimagining the possibilities of collaborative, inclusive, and contextually grounded research. What does it mean to democratize digital ethnography? How can we foster epistemic justice in the face of global inequities? How do marginalized communities challenge and negotiate power structures via digital platforms? The panel brings together scholars and researchers from different fields to discuss how they implement decolonial approaches to their practices of digital ethnography. RSVP
This event will be co-moderated by Melissa Aronczyk, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University and the co-chair of the DEWG, Jeff Lane, Professor of Communication at Rutgers University, and Bahareh Badiei, Ph.D. Candidate in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University.
Panelists:
Dr. Katrien Pype associate professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven University (Belgium), has been studying Kinshasa’s media worlds since 2003. Her monograph, The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama. Media, Religion, and Gender in Kinshasa (Berghahn 2012), is an ethnography of the production of evangelizing television serials in Kinshasa; as Kinshasa’s society digitized, Katrien's attention turned more and more towards social media, digital innovations, and smart city developments. She has published about these issues, and co-edited among others the OA book Cryptopolitics. Exposure, Concealment and Digital Media (Berghahn Books 2023, with Victoria Bernal and Daivi Rodima-Taylor), and the forthcoming The Post-Global City. Theorizing Technology Cultures in Urban Africa (University of Michigan Press, OA, 2026). Together with Sasha Newell, she co-edited a special section (forum) for the journal African Studies Review entitled "Decolonizing the virtual: future knowledges and the extrahuman in Africa" (2021). Together with Dr Leah Junck, she coordinates the Commission for Digital Anthropology for the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences; and together with Lotte Hoek, Erkan Saka, Tom McDonald and John Postill, she coordinates the Anthropology of Media subgroup for the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA). Katrien supervises PhD and postdoctoral research at KU Leuven and at the Université de Kinshasa (RD Congo) on a wide variety of themes, among others on nature in the smartification of Brussels (Dra Gloria Michiels), Parisian elderly and their participation in the digitalization of the French state (Dra Sophie Colas), the digital economy in Lagos (Dr Davide Cascione), ecomedia and climate urgency in Nairobi (Dra Rebecca Campbell), and transnational matrimony in Kinshasa and its diasporas (Drs Sébastien Maluta-Makaya, in co-supervision). She is currently leading several research projects among others on climate urgency, and green innovation.
Dr. Cindy Tekobbe is Assistant Professor of Critical Feminist Science & Technology at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She is dual appointed in Gender; Women’s Studies (GWS) and Communication. Her work investigates the digital lives, identities, and activism practices of traditionally underserved and erased peoples and communities. She has publications in journals like, Present Tense, Enculturation, the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, First Monday, and Information, Communication & Society. Her book, forthcoming from the University Press of Colorado, is titled Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces. She serves on the Executive Committee for the Association of Internet Research (AoIR) and is the acting co-chair of the Indigenous Caucus of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (4Cs). She is an ICQCM Scholar. Cindy was born and raised in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, graduating from Arizona State University with degrees in English and Rhetoric, Writing and Linguistics. Prior to arriving at UIC, Cindy researched and taught in the Composition, Rhetoric and English Studies (CRES) program at the University of Alabama. She is a citizen of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Dr. Leah Junck is a Senior Researcher and Digital Anthropologist at the Global Center on AI Governance/African Observatory on Responsible AI (South Africa). Her interest in technologies - and what it means to be human in the age of AI - has sharpened over years of living and working in South Africa. Leah's work includes exploring human-technology experiences and how they sit in conversation with structural frameworks and the broader public discourse. It also includes thinking through ways of bringing contextual discussions to the relevant tables of decision-making. Overall, Leah’s work is shaped by the conviction that a more inclusive framing of critical digital literacy/expertise is crucial for mitigating the challenges of AI and honing in on its opportunities. She is the author of Cultivating Suspicion: An Ethnography (2019) and Like a Bridge Over Trouble: An Ethnography on Strategies of Bodily Navigation of Male Refugees in Cape Town (2018).