Group Roundtable: Queer Tech Futures, Social Justice, and Community-Based Technology Education

Abstract

Abstract This essay describes a year-long community-based collaboration between faculty at Purdue University, a game designer at University of Chicago, and MAVEN Youth. Project partners sought to develop a community technology curriculum that centers the lives of LGBTQ and non-binary youth and imagines queer bodies as central to any future we wish to inhabit. Over the year-long project, the partners developed a series of social justice game design workshops for LGBTQ youth and a speculative design Hack-4-Queer Youth Futures. These types of collaborations and “making-and-telling” practices are vital to imagining inclusive and livable futures. This collaboration is an outgrowth of stakeholder engagement for the Big Data Ethics project at Purdue University supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the group roundtable format is to gain better insight into the potential for embedding critical science and technology studies (STS) and social justice pedagogy into community-based tech diversity initiatives.