Queer Data Days

On 15 and 16 March 2024, the Wikidata Gender Diversity project held the first edition of Queer Data Days, a virtual event bringing together researchers, activists, and artists investigating or applying queer approaches to data and technology.

During the event, speakers with different backgrounds — both academic and non-academic — shared short papers on a broad range of topics including queer data, queer identities, queer language, data justice and power, queer design, and queer communities on digital platforms.

The first day of the event was primarily centred on the Wikimedia ecosystem. Both days included presentations about the outcomes of the Wikidata Gender Diversity project.

The event was convened by Daniele Metilli (University College London), Chiara Paolini (KU Leuven), Beatrice Melis (University of Pisa & Gran Sasso Science Institute), and Marta Fioravanti (oio.studio), and organised by Ciara Adeniyi-Jones (University College London).

For more information, see the Wikidata page about the event.

Day One Speakers

  • Daniele Metilli, University College London: Opening and introduction
  • Beatrice Melis, University of Pisa / Gran Sasso Science Institute: Wikidata Gender Diversity – Project overview
  • Arielle Rodriguez, University of Puget Sound: Disrupting Consensus and Respecting Queer Identities in Wikidata
  • Crystal Yragui, University of Washington Libraries: Fostering Equity: Harnessing Community Engagement for Queer Inclusivity in Wikidata
  • John Samuel, CPE Lyon : Narrating Queer History with Wikidata
  • Matt Vetter, Indiana University of Pennsylvania: Contributor or Commodity? Inequities of Labor and Representation in Wikidata
  • Katy Weathington, University of Colorado Boulder: Queer Identities, Normative Databases: Challenges to Capturing Queerness On Wikidata
  • Isabella Lu & Lane Rasberry, University of Virginia: Gender Profiling in Wikidata
  • Dorothy Howard, Wikimedia LGBT: The Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group: Past, Present, & Future
  • Lucas LaRochelle, Queering the Map: Honestly Confused, Creasy in the Memory: On Queer Archives, Artificial Intelligence, and Dissociative Worldmaking
  • Rebecca Noone, University of Glasgow, & Aparajita Bhandari, University of Waterloo (Canada): 'Supporting local' Data: The politics of hypervisibility on Google Maps
  • Marco Loi, Design Academy Eindhoven: Queer Spaces and Temporalities through Rural Geographies

    • Day Two Speakers

  • Daniele Metilli, University College London: Opening and introduction
  • Marta Fioravanti, oio.studio: Wikidata Gender Diversity – Designing the Wikidata Gender Timeline
  • Bri Watson, University of British Columbia's iSchool: Queering Ontologizing
  • Birte de Gruisborne, Beyond Autonomy: Data Sovereignty, Data Literacy and Care
  • Zuziwe Khuzwayo, University of Witwatersrand: Why Do I Need to Come Out if Straight People Don’t Have To? Perspectives on the Necessity of Self-Disclosure Among Bisexual Women
  • Jess Reia, University of Virginia: Digital rights and data visibility for gender-diverse communities
  • Shuashuai Wang, University of Manchester: “Big data see through you”: Sexual identifications in an age of algorithmic recommendation
  • Gianluca De Ninno, University of Pisa: From sexism and misrepresentation to empowerment techniques: The case study of Dungeons & Dragons
  • Federica Formato, University of Brighton: Creative and functional: Gender-Inclusive Language in Italian
  • Chiara Paolini, KU Leuven: Wikidata Gender Diversity – The Wikidata Gender Talk corpus of user discussions

    • WiGeDi