Summer School 2021

Project Type

The 2021 Not-Equal Summer School aimed to equip the next generation of researchers with tools to help create the conditions to support social justice in the Digital Economy. 

The school was chaired by Clara Crivellaro, Newcastle University, and Ann Light, University of Sussex.

The summer school included a programme of talks, workshops and panel sessions with leading academics in HCI, Design & Computer Science and more, across four themes:

• The Evolution of Social Justice in the Age of Digital Networks and Machine Learning
• Equitable Digital Economies
• Making Data Work for Social Justice
• Stories from our Socially Just Digital Futures  

21 PhD students and ECRs joined our second Not-Equal summer school, which took place in June 2021.

The Summer School foregrounded dialogical spaces where speakers, workshop leaders and attendees shared their expertise, interests and experiences of doing social justice work in the digital economy.   

Over a week-long journey into the world of social justice and the digital economy, the cohort created microfictions around bodily gestures, took part in a Live Action Role Play about inter-species politics, and scrutinized the power relations and structures in their workplaces and collaborative research projects at our Solidarity Clinic.

The Summer School foregrounded dialogical spaces where speakers, workshop leaders and attendees shared their expertise, interests and experiences of doing social justice work in the digital economy.  

This resulted in many different ideas and approaches discussed and developed in each workshop — from different responses and takes on SolarPunk in our Design Fiction session to exploring different ways to adapt strategies for building equity in collaborations according to domains and contexts.