Go Denny Starks! They just presented our paper (with Aloe Deguia, Tawanna Dillahunt, and @haimson.bsky.social), Safety With Community: Technologies of Care, Connection, Collective Safety, and Mutual Aid for Transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (TBIPOC) at #CHI2026 in Barcelona.
Go Denny Starks AGAIN! They just presented our paper (with Aloe Deguia, Tawanna Dillahunt, and @haimson.bsky.social), Navigating Safety and Technology: The Everyday Safety Labor of Transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the United States at #CHI2026 in Barcelona.
Congrats to Denny on their first CHI presentations!!
"Navigating Safety and Technology: The Everyday Safety Labor of TBIPOC in the US" introduces the concept of safety labor: the emotional and cognitive work of managing misrecognition, assessing risk, and downplaying discomfort to maintain self-preservation.
"Safety With Community: Technologies of Care, Connection, Collective Safety, and Mutual Aid for TBIPOC" shows how designing for TBIPOC safety requires shifting toward community-centered tech and non-tech approaches that prioritize lived experiences, mutual aid, and collective joy.
This morning is the BIPOC Sovereignty and Care session at #CHI2026! My PhD advisee Denny Starks will be presenting two papers, both co-authored by @hibbythach.com, Aloe DeGuia, and Tawanna Dillahunt:
links to the two papers:
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
I had the pleasure of presenting my co-authors (Sena Kojah, @haimson.bsky.social, and @michaelannephd.bsky.social) and I’s paper, The Burden of Bearing Witness: Digital Practices of Marginalized Social Media Users in High-Stakes Contexts at #CHI2026 in Barcelona.
We show how these groups' urgent infrastructural and contextual needs are often overlooked in social media platforms; they develop workarounds, engage in self-censorship, and adopt coping strategies, undertaking additional, often invisible, sociotechnical repair work that reinforces their precarity.
This paper includes three case studies: diasporic groups coping with the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, ethnic minorities facing violence and human rights violations in Nigeria, and trans people creating technology while facing oppression in the United States.
This morning at #CHI2026, @hibbythach.com will be presenting our paper "The Burden of Bearing Witness: Digital Practices of Marginalized Social Media Users in High-Stakes Contexts," led by Senami Kojah and co-authored with @michaelannephd.bsky.social.
paper link: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Spotted my PhD advisees @hibbythach.com and Denny Starks hard at work at the #CHI2026 conference hotel 💻💻
Tomorrow, UMSI alumnus Ben Zhang will be celebrated at #CHI2026 for earning an Outstanding Dissertation Award!
“UMSI prepared me not only as a researcher, but also as a teacher, mentor and contributor to academic service,” he says.
Read about his dissertation: www.si.umich.edu/about-umsi/n...
Photograph of Phoebe on a stage with a microphone. Behind her is a large screen with an agender pride flag and the text "Imagine a world where... where no one cares what gender you are or..."
WHEW! Exhausted, but feel like I nailed our talk on #agender euphoria in #games.
#CHI2026
👏👏 @bzfzhang.bsky.social
Can't wait to celebrate my first graduated PhD advisee @bzfzhang.bsky.social at @chi.acm.org this week on winning a 2026 ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award!
The ACM CHI 2026 paper program is live on the ACM Digital Library, so please enjoy all the new 1702 pieces of science that #CHI2026 has for you: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi... (cc @acm_chi ).
p.s.: You can read our welcome message at dl.acm.org/action/showF...
Here's a collection of trans/queer focused papers at #CHI2026! 🌈🏳️⚧️📝
padlet.com/haimson/chi2...
If you're interested in my weird brand of blog posts that analyze academic data in strange ways, I got another one for you!
the tldr: It turns out that my lucky numbers are lucky - my papers with lucky submission ID numbers are actually more likely to be accepted.
medium.com/p/a92c71ecd5...
@hibbythach.com and I have a chapter in this new book "Epistemic Genres: New Formations of Play" - our chapter is "The Trans Game Genre: Sometimes Queer, Always Trans" 🎮 🏳️⚧️
(book is expensive but hopefully avail. in libraries; if you can't access, get in touch!)
www.bloomsbury.com/us/epistemic...
Navigating Safety and Technology: The Everyday Safety Labor of Transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the United States by Denny Starks, @hibbythach.com, Aloe DeGuia, Tawanna Dillahunt #CHI2026
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The Burden of Bearing Witness: Digital Practices of Marginalized Social Media Users in High-Stakes Contexts by Senami Kojah, @hibbythach.com, @michaelannephd.bsky.social #CHI2026
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Community Advisory Boards for Technology Design in HCI: Lessons from Trans and Queer Research by Calvin Liang, @katbamkapow.bsky.social, Kathryn Macapagal #CHI2026
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Safety With Community: Technologies of Care, Connection, Collective Safety, and Mutual Aid for Transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (TBIPOC) by Denny Starks, @hibbythach.com, Aloe DeGuia, Tawanna Dillahunt #CHI2026
backend.production.deepblue-documents.lib.umich.edu/server/api/c...
Looking forward to #CHI2026 coming up soon in Barcelona! Extremely proud of my PhD advisees Denny Starks and Senami Kojah whose first-authored papers were accepted 🤩
Here are our group's four papers this year:
Study from @haimson.bsky.social et al. found transgender, nonbinary and disabled people are more negative to AI. doi.org/10.1145/3715... Perhaps because of AI's tendency to want fixed categories, Haimson says in this new article about it: www.advocate.com/technology/c...
Tomorrow at Victorian Pride Centre! This is going to be a fun conversation with @snapdragoness.itch.io 🏳️⚧️ 🎮 📱 🌈
RSVP: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/trans-tech...
Tomorrow (Fri, 27 Feb) @haimson.bsky.social and I will give short talks on our work on trans technology, design, and euphoria at the Victorian Pride Centre at 10:30. If you're in the area and interested, we'd love to see you!
#trans #queer #hci
Sign up: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/trans-tech...
Truly so happy for my now-graduated PhD advisee @bzfzhang.bsky.social (co-advised by @michaelannephd.bsky.social) for receiving a 2026 ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award! So proud of you, Ben, and honored to have been your advisor 🤩
medium.com/sigchi/2026-...
Currently on my way to Australia for the first time! 🐨 🦘 🇦🇺
@naz-andalibi.bsky.social and I will be at Monash University to visit @snapdragoness.itch.io and her lab, and we'll both be giving talks there this Thursday morning.