Developing Scholarly Digital Feminist Networks in Canada

The English department’s Dr. Brianna Wiens and Communication Art’s Dr. Shana MacDonald are excited to share that they have recently been awarded a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant entitled “Developing Scholarly Digital Feminist Networks in Canada: Resources, Toolkits, and Outreach.” The Digital Feminist Network of Canada (DigFemNet) will bring together feminist and queer scholars from across academic partner organizations in Canada to build a public facing network of experts to mobilize expertise and shared resources for countering the rise in technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV).

Our objectives for this network coalesce around the key question of how we can best develop feminist informed approaches to collecting, archiving, and mapping campus experiences of (in)security for those targeted by TFGBV, and how we can use these approaches to the benefit of all impacted. DigFemNet currently includes four Ontario-based partner universities: the University of Waterloo (co-directors Shana MacDonald and Brianna Wiens; co-applicant Dr. Lai-Tze Fan; and collaborators Drs. Heather Love, Aparajita Bhandari, Mina Momeni, Josslyn Gabriel, Krista Godfrey, and Sana Shah), the University of Ottawa (co-applicants Drs. Constance Crompton and Jada Watson), York University (co-applicants Drs. Desirée de Jesus, Brandee Easter, and Nick Ruest); collaborator Laura Levin), and McMaster University (co-applicants Drs. Andrea Zeffiro and Chelsea Miya; collaborators Danica Evering, John Fink, and Subhanya Sivojothy).

In building the network, our primary endeavour is to document the experiences of feminist and queer scholars in university settings through semi-structured research activities including oral histories, sound walks, and visual collaging. These collected experiences will offer insights into how TFGBV impacts academic spaces. DigFemNet will transform these insights into a list of recommendations that will inform the public-facing resources we will develop. These resources include accessible and customizable toolkits for combating misogynist hate that will outline what TFGBV is, how it circulates across online and offline spaces, and what measures we can use to protect those most vulnerable to its effects within university settings. The toolkits will include infographics, workshop templates, safety checklists, and other supports that emerge from the research. We will develop complementary knowledge mobilization resources including a series of position statements and a digital exhibition highlighting the collected oral histories and visual materials to initiate outreach opportunities for building connections with additional higher education institutions and their local communities. Together these research prioritiesand objectives will provide a model for scholarly network formation and resource sharing that can be scaled up in the future to national and international contexts.

Interested in being involved? Reach out to Bri or Shana at biwiens@uwaterloo.ca or shana.macdonald@uwaterloo.ca!