Inaugural Digital Apothecary Newsletter! (Copy)
Welcome to the Digital Apothecary!
“All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.”
- Octavia E. Butler
Dear friends of the Digital Apothecary,
I am so excited to write my first official newsletter letter to you! When I was recruited to Northwestern, one of the things I most looked forward to was the opportunity to create a “lab for the labless” or a lab for those with humanist concerns that go far beyond the usual calls of research ethics in tech.
The students and scholars here, alchemists of academia and activism, are combining our collective skills to imagine new ways of relating to the digital. Concerns about environmental and racial justice undergird all our projects and we endeavor to reduce harm in our spheres of influence in the academy through our activism.
In this inaugural newsletter, we hope you will learn a bit about our vision and how we hope to, in the words of Afrofuturist Octavia E. Butler, “shape change” through collaborative and collective processes that are guided by principles of care. Be sure to sign up to receive the newsletter going forward and do share it with your friends.
The end of the Anthropocene is definitely upon us, but we are sowing seeds for a more liberatory future in the wake.
Fiercely,
Dr. Moya Bailey
Our Lab Values
Process over Product - In the digital apothecary, we are more concerned with the day to day workflows of the lab than what they generate. We want to cultivate a lab culture that is built with intention and where process takes precedence over what is produced. We value our everyday practice of our principles.
People over Publications - We strive to cultivate relationships within the lab, the greater Northwestern community, and Chicagoland area that are sustaining and mutually beneficial. We will work with community members to create publications or other outputs but not at the expense of these relationships. Our goal is to nurture community and lab relationships in a way that outlives any particular project or goal.
Accessing Accessibility - We commit to imagining and implementing a lab model that is accessible to (1) all lab members and (2) communities to whom our work can serve as a resource.
Book Club!
We invite you to read with us!
Born out of Dr. Bailey’s 6-inch bookshelf, we open our digital lab space to anyone and everyone for book club readings on the last Friday of every month. We hope for our book club meetings to be open discussions, following themes from the selected texts.
Get to Know: Jamie & Lauren
Jamie (she/they). Capricorn, Gemini, Sagittarius. Jamie is a 2nd year PhD student in Northwestern’s Media, Technology, and Society Program.
Lauren (she/her). Sagittarius, Sagittarius, Aquarius. Lauren is a sophomore student in Learning Sciences, Data Science, and Human-Computer Interaction.
The pair recorded a phone call where they discussed how they practice care as students in the academic space.
Thank you, Dr. Gavaza!
Dr. Gavaza Maluluke was a Visiting Scholar in the Digital Apothecary from September 20th, 2022, through December 1st, 2022. She shared her research with the lab and had the opportunity to work with the esteemed scholars, Beth Richie and Dana-Ain Davis, on a forthcoming publication. Her presence was an important reminder of the global reach of the digital concerns our lab considers. We look forward to her work as a continued thought partner with the lab. We’re excited to have Dr. Gavaza chat with us on January 6th, 2023, about her latest research. Join us!
Events
Gather Event Launch
On May 3rd of 2022, the Digital Apothecary Lab hosted our first launch event at our Gather Town lab, a virtual gathering space we have created for our lab. In different corners of this space, we embedded links to the various projects our lab is current working on, including Black Feminist Health Science Studies (BFHSS), Ethical Internet, and Honor. We introduced our lab and lab members and had a project rotation session where we had the opportunity to share our project and ideas with our attendees.
Cultivating Care Live Podcast
In March 2022, the Digital Apothecary Lab hosted disability leaders and activists Pidgeon Pagonis, Dr. Akemi Nishida, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha for a public roundtable. We reflected together on how integrating care work with activism and social justice is simultaneously essential, life-giving, and rife with challenges. We also discussed how an ethic of care might be integrated into academic culture. The event was co-sponsored by the Northwestern Kaplan Humanities Institute and the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities.
A New Project!
Ethical Internet
This working group is dedicated to assessing the environmental and human costs of our digital infrastructure and trying to see what else is possible. Look out for a series of workshops on the role of tech in climate resiliency, coming 2023! (Funded by a grant from the Kaplan Public Humanities Workshop)
D.A. Glossary
Digital Apothecary Defined: This is the name of our lab, and refers to our work in thinking about making social justice salves for the digital and using the digital to make salves for social justice. While the digital can be a place that can be transformative and imaginative, it can also be its own poison and toxin that we might need relief from.