Join us for a discussion of recent actions and consideration of their impacts on sex workers and performers and the futures for digital sexual content.

This conversation roundtable has been organised by the journal Porn Studies and the universities of Northumbria and Birmingham City.

Click here to RSVP and see the full event details.

Speakers:

Danielle Blunt (she/her) is a sex worker, community organizer, public health researcher and co-founder of Hacking//Hustling, a collective of sex workers and accomplices working at the intersection of tech and social justice to interrupt state surveillance and violence facilitated by technology. Blunt leads community-based participatory research on sex work and equitable access to technology from a public health perspective. Blunt is a visiting researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science Research and a 2021-2022 Civic Media Fellow at USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab. She is also on the advisory board of Berkman Klein's Initiative for a Representative First Amendment (IfRFA) and is one of the 2020 recipients of Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award.

Dr. Stefanie Duguay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada. She is Concordia University Research Chair in Digital Intimacy, Gender and Sexuality and Director of the Digital Intimacy, Gender and Sexuality (DIGS) Lab where her research focuses on the intersection of digital media with representations and practices pertaining to relationships, gender, and sexuality. This has involved studies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people’s social media participation and self-representation as well as studies of dating apps, platform appropriation, social media governance, discourses of automation and algorithmic neutrality, and the role of social and mobile media in queer social landscapes. Twitter: @DugStef

Tarleton Gillespie is a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, an affiliated associate professor in the Department of Communication and Department of Information Science at Cornell University. His most recent book is Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media (Yale University Press, 2018).

Chaired by Clarissa Smith founding co-editor of Porn Studies and Professor in Media and Sexualities at Northumbria University.