About

The DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, and Optimism) Network is a collective of interdisciplinary researchers working to envision a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future.

With funding support from the Mellon Foundation, DISCO convenes a national network of scholars who conduct cutting-edge research, offer critical analysis, and develop optimistic solutions at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, disability, technology, digital culture, and liberation. As scholars, we integrate critical humanistic methodologies to address current issues within the academy, the tech industry, and beyond.

Housed within the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, we consist of four PIs across four universities:

  • Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan

  • Rayvon Fouché, Northwestern University (Director of Humanities and Technoscience Lab)

  • M. Remi Yergeau, Carleton University (Director of Digital Accessible Futures Lab)

  • Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland-College Park (Director of Black Communication and Technology Lab)

Each lab functions both independently and as part of the broader network, engaging in research and dialogue about the cultural implications of technology, racial inequality, histories of exclusion, disability justice, techno-ableism, and digital racial politics.

DISCO Network Activities

From 2021-2027, the DISCO Network will support the next generation of scholars who challenge digital social and racial inequalities. In addition to making our work free and available to the public, we are committed to:

  • Creating a mutual support and mentorship network for underserved students and scholars in digital studies

  • Fostering research collaboration and support through lab sites across four universities

  • Bridging the gap between academic research and public discourse about digital social inequality

  • Hosting panel conversations, workshops, symposiums, performances, and other public programming

  • Publishing open-source research and projects on pressing issues in digital culture and social justice

  • Teaching critical humanistic perspectives about the history of race, gender, disability, and technological exclusion

What We Stand For

  • Digital Inquiry: We develop nuanced theory, innovative practices, and pioneering research about the digital world using interdisciplinary approaches.

  • Speculation: We create imaginative, transformative, and unconventional visions of an alternative equitable and inclusive digital future.

  • Collaboration: We believe in collaboration among different stakeholders in our digital world, including researchers, artists, technologists, policymakers, and practitioners.

  • Optimism: We reject deficit model scholarship on race, disability and technology and instead focus on resources, infrastructures, joy, creativity, and resilience.

  • Network: We invite anyone interested in exploring how digital technology perpetuates inequality and in creating new interventions to join our collective.

Accessibility Statement

The DISCO Network is committed to shifting conversations on the future of technology to position race, disability and justice at the center. We look both to disability culture and anti-racist organizing as providing models for interdependence, community engagement, and envisioning just spaces and futures. We understand access as a verb, as always-evolving and collective. We work to support access practices situated in action, re/imagination, relation, liberation, intimacy, and world building.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. The DISCO Network is fully conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Fully conformant means that the content fully conforms to the accessibility standard without any exceptions.

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the DISCO Network website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers by emailing disconetwork@umich.edu. We will try to respond to feedback within 2 business days.