Goda, Klimbyte | Germany

Goda Klumbyte is a researcher and a PhD candidate at the University of Kassel, research group Gender/Diversity in Informatics Systems. Her research engages feminist science and technology studies, new media studies and posthumanism. Of particular interest to her are the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how developments in these fields re-configure notions of body, subjectivity, knowledge and social relations. Her PhD research at the University of Kassel focuses on knowledge production in and through machine learning systems. Her work was published in Everyday Feminist Research Praxis (eds. Leurs and Olivieri, 2015), Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism (eds. Walters and Hester, 2015) and Posthuman Glossary (eds. Braidotti and Hlavajova, 2018).

My research at IAS-STS interrogates interventions to knowledge production in computing through critical – feminist, queer and postcolonial – computation and information systems design methods. Specifically, I analyse existing literature in the field of critical computing with particular attention to: (a) which epistemological approaches from which critical theories are taken into account, and (b) how these approaches are translated into methodological interventions, and (c) how these interventions are applied, if at all, to the designing and application of machine learning. Given that computation is based on operationalizable insights, the guiding questions entail: Are there critical theories that are more prone to be taken up in critical computing? And if so, which theories are left behind as less yielding to translation into computing discourse? How are critiques of power translated into implementable methodologies, and which critiques of power are translatable? How are critical theoretical insights from feminist, postcolonial and queer studies translated into models for machine learning systems- design? The project aims at distilling the over-arching structures and premises of the theoretical basis of critical computing approaches. The resulting output will constitute part of a PhD research project on the modes of knowledge production in machine learning systems.

Selected publications

Draude, C., Klumbyte, G. (2018), “Acceptability by Design: Integrating Gender Research in HCI”, CHI’18 Workshop on (Un)Acceptable!?! – Re-thinking the Social Acceptability of Emerging Technologies, April 21, 2018, Montreal, QC, Canada, published in Workshop proceedings,  https://www.socialacceptabilityworkshop.uol.de/proceedings/CHI18-SociallyAcceptableCHI-proceedings.pdf

Draude, C., Klumbyte, G., Treusch, P. (2018), “Re-Considering Bias: What Could Bringing Gender Studies and Computing Together Teach Us About Bias in Information Systems?”, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Bias in Information, Algorithms, and Systems co-located with 13th International Conference on Transforming Digital Worlds (iConference 2018), Sheffield, United Kingdom, March 25th, 2018, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2103, pp. 14-18,  http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2103/

Klumbyte, G. (2018), “Extended Cognition”, “Kin” and “Trans*”, in Posthuman Glossary, eds. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Klumbyte, G. (2015), “Wired Fingers, Sticky Keyboards: Towards an Embodied Approach to Internet Pornography” in: Everyday Feminist Research Praxis, eds. Domitilla Olivieri and Koen Leurs. New York, London: Routledge.