FemLab is an academic activist cooperative that seeks to envision and enact how digital platforms may be optimized to enhance self-actualization, representation, and collectivization in a changing and increasingly precarious market and society. We take a user-centered and feminist approach in the design and deployment of new media tools to align the future of work with human dignity, creativity, and pleasure. We work alongside diverse stakeholders such as tech designers, legal activists, policy makers, NGOs, aid agencies, worker unions, scholars and business folks to build common ground and translate insights into compelling campaigns for change and inclusive and responsible design.
The FemLab team explores the digital cultures of marginalized populations and focuses on how they broaden their networks, self-representation, expression, voice, and agency. We believe that these online networked practices may foster new forms of livelihoods, fairer work conditions, increased and meaningful digital connectivity, ethical global supply chains, and feminist governance structures and design.
The insights from our diverse projects are applied to 1) designing ethical platforms, 2) creating digital storytelling campaigns/ outreach, and 3) making accessible knowledge via visual contracts/toolkits.
Insight: To build user and stakeholder insight through ethnographic engagement
Engage: To make knowledge accessible through multimedia storytelling
Design: To guide in ethical design and deployment for empowering workers from below
Latest from the Blog
Will e-commerce revive Bangladesh’s artisanal economy?
[By Upasana Bhattacharjee, Payal Arora and Usha Raman] How does a nation participate in the digital creative economy centered on individual entrepreneurship while acknowledging its legacy in collectives of women producing crafts? This column explores the experience of Bangladesh, where despite the digitization of the craft industry, digital participation remains limited to a small number […]
Globalized creative economies: rethinking local craft, provenance, and platform design
[By Laura Herman] Can you recognize your friends’ and family members’ hand gestures? People have distinctive gestures: maybe your friend clasps her hands when she’s nervous, your mom taps her fingers together when she’s excited, or your cousin wags two fingers when making an argument. Now, imagine local artisans who hand-make their wares. Their hand […]
Will EdTech go the way of the gig economy?
[By Aditi Surie and Krishna Akhil] The forced push towards digitization of schooling-related activities due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated growth of Indian education technology (EdTech) companies. The sector plugs into and supplements the legacy of after-school tutoring and extracurricular activities by building businesses that take these services online. 80% of […]
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