APC’s Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) is a collaborative and multidisciplinary research project that “aims to build an emerging field of internet research with a feminist approach to inform and influence activism and policy making”. It supports researchers around the globe in exploring the intersections of gender and technology through a feminist lens, weaving together innovative methodologies and a tapestry of diverse experiences.
Now in its third phase, FIRN is undertaking ten new groundbreaking research projects examining critical issues such as technology-facilitated gender-based violence, human rights, amplification of marginalised voices and countering hate and discrimination.
Feminist internet research is about the framing and the processes, but what emerges in looking at the theoretical frameworks, methodologies, research designs, research principles and ethical practices is that the researchers – and their values, principles, and contexts – are central to what makes internet research feminist. This is also why we are featuring not only the research findings, but also the voices of the researchers that made those possible.
Join us as we listen to the researchers discuss their work, each bringing unique knowledge and experience from their respective regions and fields of practice, bridging communities while highlighting the unique challenges and successes of transforming gendered structures of power.
Episode 1: Feminist Sound Bites
In this episode we speak with Bárbara Paes, a Brazil-based researcher, writer, connector and project manager working at the intersection of social justice, power and technology. She is also the co-director of Instituto Minas Programam, Brazil, where she help create spaces for Black Brazilian girls and women to learn about technology and develop content about tech and society through an anti-racist perspective. Listen now!
Episode 2: Feminist Sound Bites - Coming soon!
In this second episode we connect with Aretha Asakitikpi, a researcher with a PhD in African Studies specialising in anthropology, visual arts and communication. She has carried out extensive research that interrogates media, culture and development through discourse, textual, photographic and symbolic analyses.
Episode 3: Feminist Sound Bites - Coming soon!
In this third episode we are talking with Floretta Boonzaier, Aphiwe Mhlangulana and Lilitha Hole from the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa at the University of Cape Town.
Episode 4: Feminist Sound Bites - Coming soon!
In this fourth episode we talk with Aya Elhossiny, a feminist researcher and evaluator based in Eygpt and the Netherlands who leads research on tech-facilitated violence and its implications on the sexual rights and health of women and LGBTIQ+ victims and survivors.
Episode 5: Feminist Sound Bites [en español] - Coming soon!
In this fifth episode we are speaking with Karina Núñez, a community feminist, reductionist sex worker and human rights defender of girls, boys, adolescents, sex workers and the LGBTIQ+ community, based in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is also the founder of the non-profit group "Organización de Trabajadoras Sexuales" and founder of the sex worker union O.TRAS.a
Stay tuned for more exciting explorations of this groundbreaking research!
You can read previous FIRN research at https://firn.genderit.org/research