Let’s Hack Interdisciplinarity - Workshop with Dr Sarah Healy (University of Melbourne)

Digital inclusion

How can we ensure that in an increasingly digitalized society, all citizens can still participate? Even in highly connected countries like The Netherlands, an estimated number of 5 million people is lacking the ability to critically and mindfully use digital media (BZK, 2022), leaving them at risk of being socially excluded. This hackathon, led by dr. Sarah Healy (University of Melbourne), aims to promote digital inclusion by bringing together knowledge from different fields and consider how an interdisciplinary approach can address this societal challenge.

The workshop

Unravelling the linear pathway of ‘progress’, often perceived to seamlessly link past, present, and future, we invite interdisciplinary researchers to reimagine a 'thick present' of interdisciplinarity through future-casting and fabulation. Over two half-days we will hack interdisciplinarity.

This isn't just any hackathon—it's an extended reality experience designed to think about the future, challenge perceptions about what’s possible in research, and collectively locate the big decisions that will be needed to be made at important moments. The gameplay of this SWISP (Speculative Wonderings in Space and Place) Lab hack stems from the following 'tipping point' questions:  

• At what point did you decide that an interdisciplinary approach was necessary to address a specific challenge in digital inclusion?
• At what point did you think future challenges in digital inclusion might necessitate greater interdisciplinary collaboration?
• At what point did emerging digital technologies inspire you to rethink your interdisciplinary strategies?

During the hack, we'll follow SWISP Lab’s bespoke speculative Practice Architectures to build and explore different scenarios that reflect the complexities of interdisciplinary worlds to come.

Interested in joining? There are maximum 20 spots for this workshop, so make sure to register as soon as possible! Additional registrations will be put on a waitlist in case of last-minute cancellations.

Dr Sarah Healy

Dr Sarah Healy is co-lead of SWISP Lab (Speculative Wonderings in Space and Place), a co-laboratory of interdisciplinary practitioners working in the fields of speculative a/r/tography, affect theory, metho-pedagogy, data justice, and digital scholarship in the humanities, arts and social sciences. An inaugural Melbourne Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education, Sarah is best known for her contributions to the fields of critical affect studies, digital methods and the posthumanities.

SWISP

What goes on in a SWISP Lab hack? Recently SWISP Lab hacked the concept of data with the Carbon Mediators who work at Science Gallery Bengaluru in Sci-curious workshops where art meets science.