Objects of Wisdom and Wonder: S+T at UW Feminist Technoscience Meet-Up Welcomes Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown

On May 22, 2026, nearly thirty UW scholars and champions of feminist technoscience from across three campuses and disciplines gathered at UW Press for a Feminist Technoscience Meet-Up hosted by Society + Technology at UW after guest-of-honor Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown’s public lecture, “What Does Law Mean in Crisis? How Crip Feminist Technoscience Will Save Us,” held the previous evening at Town Hall Seattle.

Rather than organizing the gathering around formal presentations or introductions, participants were invited to bring an “object of wisdom and wonder” that might glitch, jolt, or reconfigure technologies, systems, or infrastructures toward greater survival now and thriving then.

The prompt was inspired by Brown’s provocation, “in the shadow of an empire, in a world on fire, what if we could imagine—and build—otherwise?”

Participants took turns sharing their objects: a handmade deck of cards, a zine that imagines techno-futures, a Cambodian krama, a photograph of a beloved collaborator, a heavy calligraphy pen, stickers with instructions on box breathing, an interpreter and moment of translation, and Brown’s observation that they are a technology of contradiction.

A snippet of the prompt on a collaborative student zine that Associate Professor of Social Work Clara Berridge brought as her object of wisdom and wonder, created by students in her course, “Social Welfare and AI: Power, Ethics, and Social Impacts. Credit: Clara Berridge.

From left: Monika Sengul-Jones, Vannary Sou, Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown, and Ruth Karen Nakigozi at Senait Ethiopian Restaurant in Lake City, Seattle.

Society + Technology at UW fosters greater cross-campus and cross-disciplinary collaborations on the social, societial, and ethical aspects of technology through community programs like this.

The Feminist Technoscience mixer was co-sponsored by UW Press, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS), the UW Tech Policy Lab, and CREATE.

Special thanks to the undergraduates from the Tech Policy Lab, which hosts Society + Technology at UW, who helped make the experience of gathering go smoothly: Vannary Sou, Ruth Karen Nakigozi, and Raani Nigam. And thanks to Brown for sharing their love for Ethiopian cuisine afterwards.

S+T After Hours on living with “high risk” | Monday, May 18, 2026 at 5:30 PM in Tacoma

Society + Technology at UW is pleased to host the next After Hours conversation in Tacoma, Living “At Risk” with anthropologist Lisa M. Hoffman (Urban Studies, UW Tacoma) and computer scientist Josh D. Tenenberg (Engineering, UW Tacoma) in conversation about the stakes, technologies, and stories of high risk.

What if you’re living with “high risk” for future disease? Maybe it is a genetically identified risk, maybe it is family history risk. What do you do with that knowledge—and who decides what disease risk means and how you should live?

Monday, May 18, 2026 | 5:30 PM
Peaks & Pints Taproom (21+ only)
3816 N. 26^thStreet
Tacoma, WA 98407

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Topics include:

What does it mean to live with a “high” disease risk in our contemporary moment—and how does it differ from earlier formations of “risk factors”?
How genetic risk scores are shaping screening, reproduction, and everyday decision-making
Who interprets risk data? What is at stake in continuous recalculations of risk with new technologies?
What happens when you resist or refuse?

Faculty, students, community members, and curious citizens are welcome. Free and open to the public. No registration required.

About Lisa Hoffman

Lisa Hoffman is a Professor in the School of Urban Studies at UW Tacoma. An anthropologist, Hoffman’s current research focuses on Seattle’s biotech community, precision medicine, and the shape of contemporary practices of living in relation to genetic risk. Her work offers attunement to place, power, and subjectivity. Previously, Hoffman’s major projects included work on professionals and volunteers in contemporary China.

About Josh D. Tenenberg

Josh D. Tenenberg is a Professor in the Department of Engineering at UW Tacoma. His expertise is in what he calls the “borderlands” of technical and humanistic approaches. Trained in computer science, Tenenberg’s empirical research has been about computing and engineering education, software development, human-computer interaction, design research, semiotics, and technical communication. His publications include Narratives of Qualitative Research: Making Praxis Visible, published by Routledge (2024). He teaches human-oriented aspects of computing at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Feminist technoscience lecture on crisis with Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown, May 21, 2026 at 6:30 PM | Town Hall Seattle

In a world ablaze with crisis, this lecture explores crip feminist technoscience as a tool for survival and resistance—offering disabled wisdom to reimagine justice, regulate AI, and challenge empire, white supremacy, and late-stage capitalism through a disability justice lens.

What Does Law Mean in Crisis? How Crip Feminist Technoscience Will Save Us
Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown
May 21, 2026, at 6:30 PM
Town Hall Seattle

Learn more and register: https://www.washington.edu/lectures/events/what-does-law-mean-in-crisis-how-crip-feminist-technoscience-will-save-us-presented-by-the-office-of-public-lectures/

Register now for the STSS Graduate Presentations and Reception | May 14, 2026 at 5:00 PM

Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 5:00–7:00 PM
233 Sieg Building | Design Lab | UW Seattle

Join us for the annual Science, Technology, and Society Studies (STSS) Graduate Presentations and Reception, the first in-person event in a long while, celebrating the work of this year’s graduating certificate students: Dan Tibbles, Cameron Musard, Rin Huang, Rachael Diamond, and Erica Bigelow.

The STSS Graduate Certificate Program at the UW introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society through coursework, mentorship, and independent research. Through their studies, they develop specialized portfolios that reflect their intellectual interests and contributions. This capstone experience is an opportunity to hear from students about their research, to engage with our STSS faculty and affiliates community, and to celebrate the culmination of their work and our year together. A reception will follow the presentations.

Directions and parking: https://www.hcde.washington.edu/directions

Student Presenters

Dan Tibbles
Bioethics and Humanities

Advisor: Sara Goering (Philosophy)
Presentation: Zooming Out

Dan Tibbles is a graduate student in Bioethics & Humanities, Genetic Epidemiology, and Education, Equity, & Society at the University of Washington. His work sits at the intersection of bioethics, public health genetics, and science and technology studies, focusing on how institutional incentives, interpretive practices, and data infrastructures shape what biotechnologies become clinically available, how they are communicated, and whom they serve. Prior to academia, he spent two decades in the tabletop game industry as a designer, manager, and business owner, a background that informs his systems-oriented approach to ethics, infrastructure, and human choice.

Rachael Diamond
Communication

Advisor: Carole Lee (Philosophy)
Presentation: Science/Society Communication in a Warming World

Rachael Diamond is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Communication whose master’s thesis research examines climate science communication and the rhetoric of environmental activists. After earning her MA, she will start her PhD in philosophy at Northwestern University in the fall. Before coming to UW, she was a political organizer advocating for pro-climate policies and candidates, and studied philosophy at Scripps College.

Erica Bigelow
Philosophy

Advisor: Amanda Friz (Communication)
Presentation: Meeting and Making the Tech-Built World

Erica Bigelow is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy whose dissertation studies the nature and extent of our moral obligations toward others’ emotions. She is a scholar of critical disability studies and is particularly interested in how online discourse shapes and interprets such obligations, and in rethinking feminist moral theories to meet the present moment.

Cameron Musard
Urban Design and Planning

Advisor: Daniela Rosner (Human Centered Design & Engineering)
Presentation: New-Wave Old-School Urban Planning (Retro-Planning): A Master Builder Imaginary

Cameron Musard is a second-year Master of Urban Planning student within the College of Built Environments, whose STSS portfolio explores the role of craft and making in the production and authorization of knowledge within built environment schools. He is a scholar of pragmatist/linguistic philosophy. His research interests include classical sociological topics such as analytical comparison between “traditional” and “modern” societies; and in philosophy of science, analytical comparison between naturalism and positivist epistemic venues.

Rin Huang
Cinema and Media Studies

Advisor: David Ribes (Human Centered Design & Engineering)
Presentation: Media, Modernization, Mobility

Rin Huang is a graduate student in Cinema and Media Studies, focusing on transportation and its media representations. They wonder how technologies, especially those related with aviation and aeromobility, create a dispersed imagination of globalization and modernization since 1920s.

Advisors

Sara Goering
Philosophy (UW Seattle)

Sara Goering is Professor of Philosophy and the Program on Ethics, and has affiliations with the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, and the Disability Studies Program. In addition, she currently leads the ethics thrust at the UW Center for Neurotechnology. She teaches courses in bioethics, ethics, philosophy of disability, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of medicine. She also spends time discussing philosophy with children in the Seattle public schools, through her role as the Program Director for the UW Center for Philosophy of Children.

Carole J. Lee
Philosophy (UW Seattle)

Carole J. Lee is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington, an Adjunct Professor at the Information School (iSchool), and Affiliate Faculty at the Center for an Informed Public, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, eScience Institute, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and the Society + Technology Program. She studies the social structure of science from both normative and descriptive perspectives.

Amanda Friz
Communication (UW Seattle)

Dr. Friz is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine in the Department of Communication and an Associate Director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity and its Heal Equity Action Lab. She is currently writing her first book, A New Materialist Critique for a Radical Politics of Pleasure, which proposes shifting the locus of feminist pleasure activism from liberal subjectivity toward a radically inclusive plurality as the basis for more equitable sexual relationships.

Daniela Rosner
Human Centered Design & Engineering, DXARTS (UW Seattle)

Daniela Rosner is Professor of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXArts) and Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, where she serves as Associate Chair of External Affairs. She holds adjunct appointments in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) and the Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). She also serves as an associate member of the Einstein Center for Digital Futures in Berlin, Germany.

David Ribes
Human Centered Design & Engineering (UW Seattle)

David Ribes is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. Dr. Ribes’s research focuses on the sociotechnical facets of eScience and how research infrastructures can support scientific investigations across changes in technology, policy and social organization.