April 25, 2025
9:30am–3:30pm Boston / 6:30am–12:30pm Oakland / 2:30pm–8:30pm London
On April 25th, the NULab will be hosting its eighth annual spring conference, “Social Justice,” showcasing the work of faculty, students, and research collaborators.
The keynote address will be delivered by Catherine Knight Steele, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required; please RSVP here. Zoom information will be emailed upon registration. If you will be attending in person, please bring a photo ID to sign into the library.
The conference will be hybrid. We will gather in person at 350a/b Snell Library, and virtually on Zoom. All are welcome to join! We can accept RSVPs for the virtual conference up to the day of the event, but if you will be joining us in person for food, please RSVP by April 15.
Please note: We are committed to reducing food waste for this event. If you RSVP to join in person and are not able to attend please let us know by April 15 so we can update the lunch order.
Schedule
Times below are in Eastern.
- 9:30am: Light breakfast
- 9:45am: Welcome and opening
- Welcome and opening remarks: Moira Zellner, NULab Co-Director; Public Policy and Urban Affairs, College of Social Social Sciences and Humanities
- Conference details: Sarah Connell, NULab Associate Director
- 10–11:30am: AI, Language, and Networks: Digital ecologies and Communities
- Moderator: Nabeel Gillani, Design and Data Analysis, D’Amore-McKim School of Business and the College of Arts, Media and Design
- Rahul Bhargava, Journalism, Art + Design, College of Arts, Media and Design
- Brian Ball & David Freeborn, Philosophy, New College of the Humanities, Northeastern University London
- Ellen Cushman, Co-Director of NULab, Cherokee Nation Citizen, Dean’s Professor of Civic Sustainability (Unable to present)
- Burak Ozturan, Network Science Institute
- 11:30am–12:30pm: Lunch
- 12:30–1:45 pm: Keynote by Catherine Knight Steele, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland – College Park: “Lessons from a Black Feminist Technoculture: Against Automation and Toward Joy”
- Introduction by Avery Blankenship, English, College of Social Sciences and Humanities
- 2–3:25pm: Technology, Representation, and Radical Possibility
- Moderator: Caitlin Pollock, Associate Director, Digital Scholarship Group
- Lisa Arellano, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Mills College at Northeastern
- Kai-cheng Yang, Network Science Institute
- Johan Arango-Quiroga, Public Policy, College of Social Sciences and Humanities
- Stephanie Young, English, Mills College at Northeastern
- 3:25pm: Closing
- Moira Zellner, NULab Co-Director; Public Policy and Urban Affairs, College of Social Social Sciences and Humanities
- Dan Cohen, Dean of the Library; Vice Provost for Information Collaboration; Professor of History
To make space for informal discussions and community building, this conference will not be recorded. We will be including automated live captioning for the Zoom call and have requested an ASL interpreter.
Keynote Speaker Biography
Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland – College Park where she directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism (DISCO) Network. She is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow.
Dr. Steele is an educator, researcher, award-winning author, and sought-after speaker. She is the author of three books: Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press, 2021), winner of the 2022 Nancy Baym Award from the Association of Internet Researchers and the 2022 Diamond Anniversary Book Award from the National Communication Association, Doing Black Digital Humanities with Radical Intentionality (Routledge 2023) with co-authors Jessica Lu and Kevin Winstead and Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal (Stanford University Press, 2025), a collaborative project with the DISCO Network. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, specifically emphasizing Black culture, discourse, and digital communication. Dr. Steele’s research and teaching focus on race and media, specifically emphasizing Black discourse and culture, technology, and social media. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community. In her latest project, “Automating Black Joy” she is building a collaborative cross-generational cohort to create an accessible online pedagogical and research space addressing critical questions about automation, AI, and their implications on our liberation. This project stems from her latest book in progress, “The World Didn’t Give It: Black Joy and Digital Culture.”
Keynote Abstract
Lessons from a Black Feminist Technoculture: Against Automation and Toward Joy
Black women have long shaped critical conversations around technology, challenging white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy through a rich techno-cultural history that predates social media. Tracing digital histories from the blogosphere to social media and creator culture, in this talk, we think together about Black joy as a transformative technology of liberation, highlighting the collective speculative imagination in the face of an increasingly automated digital future.
