Digital Democracies Institute

Digital Democracies Institute Speaker Series - Reem Hilu
2025-03-19 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver)
You are invited to join the third session of the Digital Democracies Speaker Spring Speaker Series, featuring Reem Hilu (Washington University in St.Luis).
The Intimate Life of Computers: A Feminist Perspective on the History of Home Computing
The Intimate Life of Computers offers a feminist intervention in the history of personal computing by discussing the influence of women’s culture and feminist critique on the development of these technologies as they were taken up in US homes in the 1980s. As this talk will discuss, although women were often not involved in the production nor even the primary intended audience for most applications of 1980s computing and gaming, in order to adapt these media to the home, hardware and software producers had to contend with middle-class domestic culture, feminist critique, and their perceptions of how women would respond to computing. Computer applications such as playful therapeutic relationship software, adult sex-themed computer games, and talking dolls and robots powered by microprocessors were examples of the efforts made to integrate computers into the most intimate aspects of family life. The talk argues that, as a result of the encounter with domestic culture, personal computing came to be thought of as an intimate and interpersonal medium, one that could shape and intervene in companionate relationships.
Reem Hilu is assistant professor of Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the history of computers and games as media of relationality and considers the role of gender, sexuality, and intimacy in shaping these histories. Her work in feminist media histories of computing and gaming has appeared in journals including Camera Obscura, Feminist Media Histories, and The Velvet Light Trap.
Date: March 19, 12.30 – 1.30pm PST
Venue: Digital Democracies Institute, TASC2, room 7460, SFU Burnaby campus.
Contact us to access the Zoom link.

DDI Speaker Series: Liz Barry, Metagov
2025-04-30 12:30 - 13:30 | Online
Joining us at the Digital Democracies Lab for the next Speaker Series session is Liz Barry from Metagov.
Liz Barry is the Executive Director of Metagov. Before joining Metagov, she served as Head of Partnerships at The Computational Democracy Project, the 501(c)3 organization she established with the creators of the Polis technology to steward its open source code and methods. Liz works with facilitators, social movements, civil society organizations, journalists, indigenous nations, democratic governments both young and old, and peacebuilders to implement “listening at scale.” The collaboration began when her presence at Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Revolution and subsequent relationship with g0v led to her writing up the first coverage of vTaiwan in the west, in the 2016 piece for Civicist titled “vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy,” now republished by Taiwan’s government.
Metagov is a community of research and practice gathered around the mission to cultivate tools, practices, and communities that enable self-governance in the digital age.
If you’d like to attend, please send us an email at ddi_comms@sfu.ca, and we’ll share the attendee details with you.

Theatre Performance: (Machine) Learning to be
2025-05-16 18:00 - 2025-05-17 20:00 | Progress Lab 1422, 1422 William St, Vancouver, British Columbia, V5L 2P7, Canada
From an international collaboration spanning 9 universities, 50+ researchers, and 15 artists, comes a multimedia performance experience that engages with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and their impacts. (Machine) Learning To Be explores the many faces of AI, its dangers, and possibilities for our communities. Engage with the performance on May 16th and 17th at Progress Lab 1422 and online, as you take part in a conversation around the possibilities and impacts of AI on the human body and society. (Machine) Learning To Be uses a hybrid performance model, which means audiences can join in both online and in-person.
The Vancouver performances (May 16-17) are co-produced by the Data Fluencies Theatre Project and Theatre Conspiracy and developed with support from the Data Fluencies Project through the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University. The performance had a developmental workshop with public sharing at Brown University (August 2024), produced in collaboration with Brown Arts Institute as part of the inaugural Brown Arts IGNITE Series.
The live online performance is powered by CultureHub Broadcaster.
For free tickets to the online performance, please register here: https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/machine-learning-to-be-online-experience.
Dates & Shows:
May 16, Friday | 6 PM
May 16, Friday | 8 PM
May 17, Saturday | 8 PM

Duration: 1 Hour

Tickets
Special Pricing: Pay What You Can

Venue: Progress Lab 1422 & online

Data Fluencies: Tributaries
2025-05-29 12:00 - 2025-07-19 17:00 | Or Gallery, 236 E Pender St, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6A 1T7, Canada
Featuring artists Lai Yi Ohlsen, Lani Asunción, Jazsalyn, Kristoffer Ørum, Caroline Sinders, and Roopa Vasudevan, with experimental research by the Night School for Data Fluencies, DATA/FFECT, hannah holtzclaw, and Data Fluencies Pedagogies.

The second of three thematically connected shows taking place across North America this spring and summer, this exhibition at Or Gallery investigates art’s potential for reimagining our often narrow understandings of data and machine learning and advocating for the digital futures we want. Using the river tributary as a conceptual starting point, the exhibition invites you to explore how our current understandings of data and technology can become a site for broader, community-centred discussions beyond the academy.

Data Fluencies: Tributaries features the diverse work of six contemporary artists, alongside experimental research supported by the Data Fluencies Project, based out of the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University. Together, the artists and researchers featured here offer us ways to (re)consider our relationships with the data that surrounds and drives our everyday lives—and perhaps find new routes to agency once we are able to do so.

The Data Fluencies exhibitions are organized by Roopa Vasudevan, a co-PI on the Data Fluencies Project. Visual identity by PROPS SUPPLY.

Dates & Shows: May 29 – July 19
Open hours Wednesday – Saturday, 12–5 PM
Opening Reception: 29 May, 5 – 8 PM
Public Curatorial Tour: 31 May, 2 PM
Venue: Or Gallery, 236 Pender St East, Vancouver, BC

Author Meets Critics: Dr. Susan Erikson's Book Launch
2025-09-19 16:00 - 18:00 | The Teck Gallery, SFU Harbour Centre, 515 W Hastings St, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6B 1A1, Canada
Join in for an electric conversation with Dr. Susan Erikson, an SFU Distinguished Professor, who studies highly complex political economies that shape human health. Her new book, Investable! When Pandemic Risk meets Speculative Finance – A Cautionary Tale (MIT Press, 2025), which she traveled over 420,000 research kilometres to write, is about the financialization of global health and capitalist speculation repurposed as save-the-world innovation.
Dr. Erikson will be in conversation with Anke Kessler and Iveoma Udevi-Aruevoru in an open session about her work, research, and the story behind Investable! The book will be available to buy at the venue courtesy of Cross and Crows.
Refreshments and snacks will be served at this downtown venue.
This event is hosted with the support of the Digital Democracies Institute, the School of International Studies, and the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.

About Investable!
In a world increasingly defined by crisis, bankers behind the scenes turn catastrophes into financial securities that can be bought and sold. Offering new insights into how the excesses of capitalism shape emergency preparedness, Investable! is an ethnography of the World Bank bonds designed to solve health funding shortfalls by getting international investors to gamble on future crises. Erikson, who traveled over 420,000 kilometres conducting research for the book, takes readers from West African roads to Wall Street to Boston data modeling firms to tell the stories of the people, the special interests, and the logics of pandemic bonds. Written for a smart general audience concerned about capitalism’s effect on human health, Investable! will appeal to people working in global development, health care and data modeling, international affairs, and anyone who wants to better understand how the worlds of high finance shape how we care for one another.
