April 17, 2026

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

Jenny L. Davis is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, Honorary Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University, and Affiliate at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Apryl Williams, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Media, Communication, and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She is the author of Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating.

Join us for a discussion of their co-authored work: The Injustice of Fairness (forthcoming: The University of California Press).

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

April 7, 2026

Dr. Alisa Hardy will guide participants through creating storymaps as a method for analyzing and representing narratives. Using geographic mapping technologies to structure stories across space and place, participants will engage hands-on with tools like ArcGIS StoryMaps and Knight Lab’s StoryMapJS, analyze examples from Black communities, and begin developing their own storymaps!

Dr. Alisa Hardy will guide participants through creating storymaps as a method for analyzing and representing narratives. Using geographic mapping technologies to structure stories across space and place, participants will engage hands-on with tools like ArcGIS StoryMaps and Knight Lab’s StoryMapJS, analyze examples from Black communities, and begin developing their own storymaps!

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

April 3, 2026

Rua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the School of Applied and Creative Computing at Purdue University, and a former Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council. Dr. William’s work explores how disabled people imagine and build their own socio technical worlds.

Join us for conversations around Dr. William’s forthcoming work: Disabling Intelligences (Palgrave MacMillan).

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

March 24, 2026

This workshop, led by Dr. Sharla Berry, will explore the creation of information Digital Zines. Zines are homemade miniature magazines, devoted to specialized subject matter.

DISCO Network | University of Michigan

March 10, 2026

What does it mean to be in community? This panel brings together activists, scholars, and writers to explore connections between critical social issues—health justice, discrimination, technofascism, and surveillance—and the possibilities of grassroots response. Panelists will discuss tensions between collectivizing and collaborating: How do we negotiate care when our access to care hinges on being identified and enumerated by the state? What tactics for resistance might we use in digital communities that are subject to increased surveillance? How can we be there for and with each other?

BCaT Lab | University of Michigan

March 10, 2026

Drawing from contemporary alternative and independent Black cultural archives and digital projects, the workshop centers expansive approaches to memory work that challenge traditional paradigms. Participants will reflect on the contents of their personal archives and explore digital archival methods that support the active creation and stewardship of historical documentation.

DISCO Network | University of Michigan

February 26, 2026

Is social media still social? With the spread of content creation as a business, political strategy, and pastime across platforms, where is the space for sociality in social media? This panel examines the role of engagement farming, influencer culture, misinformation, disinformation, and AI in reshaping social media as a creator economy. In a digital landscape where we all serve as content creators and/or unwitting sources of valuable data, we explore whether social media is still a desirable avenue for forming and cultivating community, engaging in organizing strategies, or simply being social.

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

February 24, 2026

During this workshop, participants will learn about docu-poetics, respond to creative prompts, and learn how to use the open source platform, Twine, which is a tool used for storytelling, choose-your-own-adventure games, and other interactive experiences.

DISCO Network | University of Michigan

January 29, 2026

Can technology improve the lives of Black boys? Recently, new reports, with familiar conclusions, discuss the way Black boys continue to fall behind, which is partially responsible for shrinking enrollments of Black men in college. Particularly striking are the declining numbers at HBCUs. In turning this conversation away from negative reporting toward positive action, we will explore the ways technology can intervene and provide new opportunities, pathways, and platforms for Black boys to thrive.

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

December 3, 2025

Join us at the BCaT Lab for an in-conversation between artists and archivists Amber Robles-Gordon, keondra bills-freemyn and Maïa Walcott. The session will explore artistic practice as/and archival methods; the role of Black art in filling archival silences through critical fabulation; and explore themes of personal and collective Black diasporic experience.

DISCO Network | University of Michigan

November 6, 2025

This panel brings together Black feminist scholars, writers, and public intellectuals to examine how and why debates about gender, sexuality, and nationality consistently emerge as top topics on social media platforms within Black discursive communities. How do algorithms and influencer culture contribute to sowing discontent and misinformation among Black social media users? We consider the social and political implications, who ultimately benefits from these conversations, and how we can make different choices around our own engagement and participation.

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

November 5, 2025

Join us at the BCat Lab to discuss exemplary digital humanities projects from around the world, as we define Black Digital Humanities and consider what these interdisciplinary projects can offer to teaching, research, and accessibility of outputs. Lunch will be provided, and feel free to bring any projects you have been involved with or are interested in to the discussion!

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

November 5, 2025

Join us at the BCaT Lab to learn how to maximize the benefits of academic conferences! We will discuss selecting and applying for conferences, preparing for an academic conference presentation, what to expect, and how to network.

BCaT Lab | University of Maryland

November 5, 2025

Join us at the BCaT Lab to learn about the application for the Automating Black Joy Microgrant! Automating Black Joy is a project that points a critical lens toward the future of AI. This event is open to all students and faculty, particularly those seeking guidance on how to proceed with their application, either as an individual applicant or as part of a group application. We will discuss the microgrant application process, team formation, and the next steps.

DISCO Network | University of Michigan

October 16, 2025

Everything is on fire. The supports disabled people need for survival are being decimated. The robots are coming after us, harvesting our data, surveilling us, and determining who is worthy to live. What can we do? How might the wisdom of disability elders and cross-movement organizers equip us for what’s happening and what’s to come? This roundtable brings together disability culture workers, activists, writers, and scholars to think-together about disability futures.

Search Engines | University of Michigan

October 3, 2025

Search History is a student-led zine publication from the University of Michigan community, hosted by Search Engines: Art, Tech, Justice. Search Engines is funded by the U-M Arts Initiative and the DISCO Network, housed in the Digital Studies Institute. In the last year, Search Engines brought artists such as Astria Suparak, Beth Coleman, Morehshin Allahyari, Paul Preciado, and Molly Soda to the Ann Arbor campus for workshops, performances, and panel discussions.