Research

Part of a collection through the Berggruen Institute, Fungal Futures is one of eleven works in a collection of relics posting specualtive answers to the question, "What will life become?" Fungal Futures explores a future in which astrobiologists work to program fungi with the hope of creating an environment for life on Mars through the recorded journal entries of one of these scientists.

This talk examines seemingly opposed perspectives surrounding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): its framing as a "New Manhattan Project" driven by geopolitical competition and fears of annihilation, and its reinterpretation by some as an expansion of the definition of life itself. The presentation argues that both narratives, despite their apparent opposition, are deeply intertwined with and perpetuate gendered, racial capitalist and colonial relations. The talk suggests that the push for AGI, whether for global supremacy or a redefinition of life, obscures ongoing exploitation and reinforces existing power structures, underscoring the need for feminist understandings of life and living.

For more information on the conference, please visit the University of Applied Arts's Critical AI: Rethinking Intelligence, Bias, and Control conference's webpage.

Online panel from the Woodhull Freedom Foundation that is part of their online censorship series of panels. Dr. Mathiason speaks on the panel alongside Carly Sheridan and Monique Starr.

Description: 

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how we live, connect, and express ourselves—but what happens when these technologies start shaping our freedoms, too? As AI becomes increasingly intertwined with censorship, surveillance, and bias, its influence reaches deeply into our most personal realms—sexuality, identity, and autonomy. This conversation invites curiosity rather than fear, asking how we can challenge the stigmas and systems that allow technology to impact our sexual freedom. Together, we’ll explore how AI can both threaten and expand human possibility—and how reimagining our relationship with it might open the door to a more liberated digital future.

Keynote Mercator Lecture at the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn during the symposium titles "Technological Futures Now. Racism, Imperialism and the Surrogate Human Effect"

Abstract: AI Between Annihilation and Life. This talk examines seemingly opposed perspectives surrounding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): its framing as a "New Manhattan Project" driven by geopolitical competition and fears of annihilation, and its reinterpretation by some as an expansion of the definition of life itself. The presentation argues that both narratives, despite their apparent opposition, are deeply intertwined with and perpetuate racial capitalist and colonial relations. By tracing the historical legacy of the original Manhattan Project, including land appropriation and environmental devastation, the talk reveals how existing infrastructures are being repurposed for AI development, exacerbating energy consumption and climate concerns. Ultimately, the talk suggests that the push for AGI, whether for global supremacy or a redefinition of life, obscures ongoing exploitation and reinforces existing power structures, underscoring the need for alternative understandings of life and living.

Hosted by the Feminist AI Network, this Workshop was part of the Conference Technological Futures Now at CST.

Neda Atanasoski will present the new book she edited together with Nassim Parvin: "Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen". From the book description:
New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires, and smart forests toward dreams of feminist futures. Considering diverse technologies such as border surveillance and China’s credit system to sexcams and home assistants, the volume’s essays and artworks - including contributing authors - demonstrate that the potentials and pitfalls of artificial intelligence and digital and robotic technologies cannot be assessed through binaries of seeing/ being seen, privacy/surveillance, or harmful/useful. Together, their multifaceted and multimodal approach transcends such binaries, accounting for technological relations that exceed sight to include touch, presence, trust, and diverse modes of collectivity. As such, this volume develops creep as a feminist analytic and creative mode on par with technology’s complex entanglement with intimate, local, and global politics.

This workshop will be hosted by the Feminist AI Network as part of the Conference Technological Futures Now.

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires, and smart forests toward dreams of feminist futures. Contributing authors further illuminate what is otherwise obscured, assumed, or dismissed in characterizations of technology as creepy or creeping. Considering diverse technologies such as border surveillance and China’s credit system to sexcams and home assistants, the volume’s essays and artworks demonstrate that the potentials and pitfalls of artificial intelligence and digital and robotic technologies cannot be assessed through binaries of seeing/being seen, privacy/surveillance, or harmful/useful. Together, their multifaceted and multimodal approach transcends such binaries, accounting for technological relations that exceed sight to include touch, presence, trust, and diverse modes of collectivity. As such, this volume develops creep as a feminist analytic and creative mode on par with technology’s complex entanglement with intimate, local, and global politics.

Featuring contributions from Neda Atanasoski, Katherine Bennett, Iván Chaar López, Sushmita Chatterjee, Hayri Dortdivanlioglu, Sanaz Haghani, Jacob Hagelberg, Jennifer Hamilton, Antonia Hernández, Marjan Khatibi, Tamara Kneese, Erin McElroy, Vernelle A. A. Noel, Jessica Olivares, Nassim Parvin, Beth Semel, Renee Shelby, Tanja Wiehn

State violence against disabled people and Indigenous people as well as disabled Indigenous people has long been endemic in the US. Recent scholarship in philosophy of disability and disability studies rarely addresses the underlying issue that causes such state violence: settler-colonial conceptions of land. The aim of this article is to begin filling this gap in the literature. We detail settler colonial epistemologies and argue that the property relation underwrites operative concepts of accessibility dominant across disability theory. We show how such concepts of accessibility are Lockean and thereby defined terms of the project of settler colonialism. We instead offer an Indigenized account of access, which we term deep access, that does not rely on the notion of Lockean property and that provides a coalitional path for Indigenous futures and disability justice. On our account, decolonization is and must be a deep access measure.

In this episode host Gladys Rowe engages in a powerful conversation with Indigenous feminist philosopher and educator Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner. Shelbi shares her journey into evaluation through her work on Indigenous language reclamation and her deep engagement within Indigenous research methods. She discusses the significance of relationship-building, the centrality of kinship and gender diversity, and the creation of the Indigenous Feminist Evaluation Framework. Shelbi also highlights her role as the founding director of the Indigenous Futures Lab and her inspiring work on community-driven projects. Together, Gladys and Shelbi reflect on how Indigenous knowledge systems, felt knowledge, and artistic practices like basket weaving can transform research and evaluation processes. This episode is a rich exploration of Indigenous feminist approaches to evaluation and the importance of centering community voices and diverse knowledges.

Abstract 

It is commonly assumed that we currently face a climate crisis insofar as the climatological effects of excessive carbon emissions risk destabilizing advanced civilization and jeopardize cherished modern institutions. The threat posed by climate change is treated as unprecedented, demanding urgent action to avert apocalyptic conditions that will limit or even erase the future of all humankind. In this essay, we argue that this framework—the default climate crisis motif—perpetuates a discursive infrastructure that commits its proponents, if unwittingly, to logics that ultimately reinforce the dynamics driving climate change and its attending injustices. By centering Indigenous feminist environmental discourses, which privilege the role of richly interweaving networks of responsibilities composing extended more-than-human kinship arrangements, we contend that climate crisis is instead primarily a manifestation of devastating multidimensional relational disruptions of Indigenous lands and lives. More pointedly, it is a rebound effect of centuries of accumulating colonial injustices against responsible lifeways that are critical for socioecological adaptability and responsiveness. Framing climate crisis as relational crisis hereby creates discursive space for much needed transformational Indigenous feminist visions for justly and effectively addressing climate change.

This article was published in Vol. 10 No. 1/2 (2024): Revolutionizing Responsibility.

Moving past the conflation of state socialism with all socialist projects, this book opens up avenues for addressing socialist projects rooted in decolonial and antiracist politics. To that end, this anthology brings together scholarship across regions that engages postsocialism as an analytic that connects the ‘afters’ of the capitalist– socialist dynamic to present day politics. Resisting the revolutionary teleology of what was before, “postsocialism” can function to create space to work through ongoing legacies of socialisms in the present.

Looking at the Middle East, Scandanavia, Korea, Romania, China, and the US, the chapters in this book assess ongoing socialist legacies in new ethical collectivities and networks of dissent opposing state- and corporate- based military, economic, and cultural expansionism since the end of the Cold War.

The majority of the chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Social Identities.