My work explores the linkages between technology, feminism, activism and art through ethnographic studies and projects. My current research focuses on feminism and hacking, feminist approaches to cryptography, anti-colonial hacking, activist algorithms and, feminist, queer+ trans hacker culture.
In my work, I also question the boundaries between research and activism trying to better understand what it means to be an activist researcher. To read about my attempt to challenge binaries go to the practices section.
Below you can find a selection of academic and non-academic articles and book chapters, I have written or co-written:
- SSL Nagbot (Eds), Feminism and (Un)hacking, Special Issue of the Journal of Peer Production, Issue 8, August-September 2015 forthcoming.
(SSL Nagbot is a moniker that is composed of three editors namely and in alphabetical order: Shaowen BarDzell, Lily Nguyen and Sophie Toupin. With the moniker, we decided to experiment with feminist trickstery ourselves by hacking the academic authorship system in merging our three names and creating the pseudonym, SSL Nagbot, a practice reminiscent of the feminist geographers J.K. Gibson-Graham)
- Anti-Colonial Hacking: The Case Study of An Autonomous Encrypted Communication Network Developed During the Struggle Against Apartheid in South Africa, Journal of Peer Production issue #9. Alternative Internet. (January 2016)
- Hackerspaces: The Synthesis of Feminist and Hacker Cultures. Journal of peer production issue#5 Shared machines. (October 2014)
- (with Levi-Sanchez, Suzanne) New Social Media and Global Resistance. In Gender Matter in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations, 2nd Edition, Laura J. Shepherd (Eds), Taylor and Francis, 2014.
- (with Haralanova, Christina)FemHack – Feminism and Hacking Converge in a Montreal Tech Collective, dpi. Feminist Journal of Art and Digital Culture issue 29 (April 2014)
- Feminist, queer and trans online and offline praxis dpi. Feminist Journal of Art and Digital Culture issue 28 (December 2013)
- (with Ng, Eve)Feminist and Queer Practices in the Online and. Offline Activism of Occupy Wall Street. Protest and the New Media Ecology, Networking Knowledge,The journal of MeCCSA’s Postgraduate Network.
- Feminist Hackerspaces as Safer Spaces?, dpi. Feminist Journal of Art and Digital Culture issue 27 (April 2013)
- An Open-Air Self-Managed Social Center Called Occupy. Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 2013, 1(1): 17-30
- (with Tait, Ruth). Highway of the Atom. In Extraction! A Comix Reportage. Dubois, Frédéric, Marc Tessier & David Widgington (Eds.) 2007.