Working Group Members
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and IT for Change convened a Working Group on Feminist Digital Justice, in August 2021, to build a grounded critique and alternative theory of the network-data paradigm and bring gender justice narratives to the center of contemporary economic policy discussions. The Working Group brought together 36 feminist scholar-practitioners from the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. The immense diversity and the wealth of knowledge and experience that the members brought to the table was richly reflected in the discussions held by the Working Group over the course of 17 months.
Agustina Calcagno is a feminist action practitioner for social change and climate justice. She is also a political scientist and holds a Master’s degree in strategies and technologies for development. Currently, she serves as the Knowledge Base Project Manager at South Feminist Future. For more than 10 years, Agustina has been working on social programs specializing in technology and environmental and gender issues, specifically with global South social movements, networks, NGOs, and communities. She facilitates the efforts of women environmental defenders in Gran Chaco, Argentina, and is a member of the Gender Committee of Argentina’s National Engagement Strategy.
Anjalee de Silva is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Melbourne Law School node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She is a member of the Centre’s Equity and Diversity Committee, and has previously held the roles of Honorary Fellow (Melbourne JD) and Teaching Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Anjalee has previously taught Administrative Law and Free Speech and Media Law in Melbourne Law School’s Juris Doctor and Breadth programs, respectively. She is an expert in free speech and media law theory, with a focus on harmful speech and its regulation, particularly in online contexts.
Belén Valencia Castro is a transfeminist and an active member of the Institute for Ecuadorian Studies’ research and pedagogical-political training team. Belén is also a part of the Observatory of Rural Change. She’s specialized in topics such as gender, sexuality, reproductive and care work, and feminisms. She primarily works with indigenous and peasant women from different organizations and social movements in the Sierra and Costa regions. Belén also conducts research about migrant laborers in digital delivery platforms in Ecuador, with a theoretical framework that seeks to investigate body, migration, borders, and labor from the digital lens.
Caitlin Kraft-Buchman is the CEO and Founder of Women at the Table – a gender equality and systems change CSO based in Switzerland. She is also the Co-Founder of the <A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms – a global coalition ensuring a world where machine learning does not wire already biased systems into our future. Previously, Caitlin served as a co-chair of the Technology & Innovation Expert Group for CSW67. She is also the Co-Founder of International Gender Champions.
Emilia is the Program Director of Policies and Budgets for Equality and Sustainable Development at Gender Equity: Citizenship, Work and Family. She coordinates the Campaign of Campaigns, is the Co-Convenor of the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development, and co-lead of the Economic Justice and Rights Action Coalition. She is a contributing author for the IPCC report on Adaptation in 2022. In the past, she was an Organizing Partner of the Women’s Major Group for the 2030 Agenda, and Co-chair of the High-Level Political Forum’s Major Groups and Stakeholders Coordination Mechanism.
Fernanda Bruno is an Associate Professor at the Post-Graduation Program of Communication and Culture, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is also the Director of MediaLab UFRJ and a Senior Researcher at the National Scientific Council, Brazil. Fernanda is also a founding member of the Latin American Network of Surveillance, Technology, and Society Studies, and she is the author of numerous books, essays, and articles on socio-technical networks, subjectivity, cognition, visibility apparatuses, and surveillance culture.
Gyssele is a feminist and lesbian journalist, who graduated in Media Studies and has Master’s degree in Communication, from Fluminense Federal University. She lives in Rio de Janeiro and is currently the Executive Coordinator of Intervozes – Coletivo Brasil de Comunicação Social, a Brazilian organization that fights for the human right to communication.
Ixchel is a historian and researcher in gender, technology and feminisms at Luchadoras. She is an artist and her work and research focuses on corporeality, eroticism, freedom of expression and internet censorship. She is a human and digital rights advocate.
Luciana Brito is a psychologist by training and is the Co-Director of the Anis – Institute of bioethics, Brazil. She earned a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and Culture from the University of Brasília and holds a PhD in Health Sciences, Bioethics, Mental Health, and Human Rights. She is a part of ABRASCO’s Bioethics working group.
Mariana Antoun is a feminist activist, journalist, researcher, and Nina’s mother. She is associated with Medialab UFRJ, an experimental and transdisciplinary laboratory dedicated to investigating the intersections between techno-politics, subjectivities, and visibilities. She also works with ReC/UFF, a research group on Rhetoric of Consumption, which is currently focused on the impacts of digital advertising on systems of disinformation. She is a Master’s student in Communication in Culture at ECO/UFRJ. Her research interests include gender techno-politics, mobile applications, and subjectivities. She currently works as a Communication Consultant for socio-environmental organizations.
Mariana Valente is a law professor at the University of Saint Gallen, Switzerland, and an Associate Director at InternetLab, Brazil. She dedicates herself to research on the intersection of technology and society, regulation of the digital economy, and fundamental rights in the online environment – particularly in the areas of equity policies, gender equality, gender-based violence, access to knowledge, culture and education, intellectual property, the impact of technologies on democracy and social mobilization, and data justice issues.
Muthoni Muriithi is a Pan-African feminist and human rights lawyer working on the nexus of gender-based violence and technology. She is currently the Co-Director at the Accelerator for Gender-based Violence Prevention program. Previously, she worked as a Senior Gender Policy Manager at the World Wide Web Foundation. Muthoni has worked in different capacities on advancing human rights frameworks in Africa to promote gender equality as well as supported strategic litigation efforts to promote access to justice.
Richa Singh works with the media and communications team at Breakthrough India, an organization working towards normative change to make violence against girls and women unacceptable. Richa is interested in exploring change using digital media platforms.
Shubha Kayastha is a feminist activist based in Nepal who works at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and technology. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Body & Data, a digital rights organization that advocates for just, open, and safe internet for all. Her work revolves around bringing a feminist lens to the issue of freedom of expression and sexual expression, data privacy, and digital security. She is also a member of a Global South-led transnational feminist network, Resurj, that works on sexual justice.
Zhang Qi holds a PhD in Communication Studies, and has graduated from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is the Founder of Beijing Deqing Insights Technology. Her research fields focus on communication and social development, and social sciences research methods. She has extensive research experience on gender, children, ethnic minorities, migrant workers, and communication. Previously, she led and coordinated several programs in the area of gender and communication, such as the action research project on Using Internet Campaign to end Violence Against Women in China (2003-2010), and the China project of Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP 2010).
Alejandra Santillana Ortiz identifies herself as a left-wing feminist and anti-racist sociologist and researcher, working at the Institute of Ecuadorian Studies and the Observatory of Rural Change. She also serves as a professor at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. She is a member of the Critical Studies on Rural Development and the Gender working group, and is a part of the Memory Network in Latin America and the Caribbean of CLACSO, and the RUDA Feminist Collective, among other organizations. Her research interests include feminism, Marxism, and feminist economics. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Latin American studies.
Barsha Chakraborty is a development professional working as a gender rights specialist with global organizations focused on evidence-based campaigning, policy, advocacy, and social behavioral change communication. She has been working on the issues of structural exclusions, violence, disaster risk reduction, and digital rights. She started her development sector journey working with Safai Karmachari Andolan, a campaign against manual scavenging, followed by ActionAid, and had the opportunity to work with various intersectional grassroots organizations working among the most marginalized communities. Barsha is presently working with Breakthrough India, leading digital media programs and partnerships, responsible for gender and tech, and social behavioral change communication to address gender-based violence.
Cai Yiping is a member of DAWN’s Executive Committee. She co-leads DAWN’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) thematic analysis team. Previously, she served as an Associate Researcher at the Women’s Studies Institute of China (2006 – 2008) and was a journalist for China Women’s News (1995 – 2005), writing extensively on women’s human rights. Her research focuses on the transnational feminist movement, especially in the global South, sexual and reproductive health and rights, media, and communication.
Diyana Yahaya is a feminist activist, researcher, trainer, and mobilizer. She has worked for more than a decade at national, regional, and global levels to undertake research and analysis, carry out advocacy on laws and policies, and strengthen movements’ capacity to understand, challenge, and develop alternatives to the traditional economic and development model. In her work around a range of macroeconomic policies and issues, she has particularly focused on advancing feminist analysis and alternatives to the current trade, finance, and investment rules, and has also authored several briefs, reports, toolkits, training modules, and publications on these issues.
Farzana Nawaz is an independent consultant and international development expert with over 15 years of experience across a range of areas, including labor rights in supply chains, gender equity, the future of work, and governance. Farzana has extensive on-the-ground work experience in South and South-East Asia, where she has worked closely with grassroots labor rights organizations aiming to strengthen workers’ voices and working conditions in the apparel supply chain. Since 2019, she has been leading a multi-country learning initiative in Asia looking at how publicly available data is being used by trade unions to strengthen negotiations and advocacy.
Ghausia Rashid Salam is a development professional and feminist researcher. Their passion for science fiction and fantasy has convinced them that other worlds are possible, and they try to build better worlds through their work and activism. Their interests include sexual violence, sexuality, SRHR, and more recently, decolonizing academia and development.
Ingrid Brudvig is a digital anthropologist who works as a Senior Consultant at Women at the Table. Ingrid’s work is focused on gender, data, and technology; feminist research methods; and human rights in the digital age. Ingrid holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Cape Town.
Jun-E Tan is a policy researcher in a Malaysian think tank. Her current research interests include digital rights and AI governance in the contexts of Southeast Asia and Malaysia. She has also worked in the areas of environmental and climate policy, social and solidarity economy, as well as sustainable development in general.
Mariana Fossatti is the Decolonizing Wikipedia coordinator of ‘Whose Knowledge?’ She is a feminist and a free/libre culture activist from Uruguay, and a long-term Wikimedian. Previously, Mariana worked with ‘Whose Knowledge?’ for four years as #VisibleWikiWomen Campaign Coordinator. She has a background in sociology and she has a Master’s degree in Society and Development from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay. She co-founded the Uruguayan chapters of Creative Commons and Wikimedia in 2013. She has also worked in the APC Women Rights Program, amplifying women’s voices in tech on the GenderIT.org blog.
Marianna Fernandes is a PhD scholar researching issues of anthropology and sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She also serves as a Research Assistant at the Centre for International Environmental Studies, where she is a part of the ERC Synthetic Lives project. Her PhD research investigates the incorporation and use of 4.0 technologies in the mining industry. She is particularly interested in the socio-ecological and labor dynamics that underpin automation, as well as the generation and use of digital data in the sector.
Nancy Kachingwe is the Co-Founder and Coordinator of South Feminist Futures based in Harare, Zimbabwe. She has over two decades of experience working with international and regional NGOs in Brussels, Harare, Accra, and Johannesburg on a range of development policy issues including trade and globalization, regional integration, land rights, women’s empowerment, and climate change – with particular focus on influencing policy and strengthening civil society and movement-building.
Sachini Perera is the Executive Coordinator of RESURJ. She is a queer feminist from Sri Lanka who thinks, researches, writes, makes, and teaches at the intersections of technology, pop culture, sexual and reproductive justice, and pleasure. She is also a co-creator of Delete Nothing, a trilingual platform to systematically document online gender-based violence in Sri Lanka and help survivors find support. Sachini has a Master’s degree in Digital Culture and Society from King’s College London and a Bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Colombo. She was also a Chevening scholar (2019-2020).
Sofia Scasserra is an economist. She has served in the trade union movement across Latin America for many years on issues about technology and its impact on labor. Currently, she is the Director of the Observatory of Social Impacts of AI at the University Tres de Febrero, Argentina. She is also an Associate Researcher at the Transnational Institute, where she researches issues regarding the digital economy and society.
Sohini Bhattacharya has spent 30+ years in the development sector, focusing on women’s empowerment. She co-founded the Sanhita Gender Resource Centre in 1996. Before Breakthrough, she worked with Ashoka Innovators for the Public for 10 years on institution-building in South Asia. She also worked as the India strategy advisor for the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network. Currently, Sohini is the CEO of Breakthrough, an organization focused on transforming gender norms to prevent gender-based violence. Sohini is also a founding member of the Coalition for Good Schools – Voices from the South, a coalition of practitioners committed to a safe learning environment for adolescents across the global South.
Zhang Dana is a queer feminist based in Taiwan. She is the founder of the local feminist group, Feminist Leadership and Mobilization on the Edge (FLAME) — a group that aims to promote gender-equal access to technology. Zhang is also a member of RESURJ, a South-led transnational feminist network that works on sexual justice.