OVERVIEW
Advancing understanding of secondhand marketplaces through feminist economics and future of work principles.
Under the Design Ethnography and Artistic Research (DEAR) Lab at Georgia Tech, I joined Doctoral researcher Sara Milkes Espinosa in the design and facilitation of a participatory immersion guiding online resellers to imagine cyberfeminist futures of algorithm-driven circular economies.
Mixed-Methods Research
Print Design
Web Design
Print Design
Web Design
TOOLS
Figma, Google Forms, Observational Studies, Interviews, Participatory research
TEAM
Sara Milkes Espinosa
Working to explore intersectional and holistic reselling experiences with technology and circular economy from the lens of feminist theory. My methodology include participatory methods, engaging reseller communities first with capacity building, then with collective mapping and identifying of circular economies using decolonial feminist economic theories, and then conducting guided design fictions and speculation that employ Future of Work principles to collectively reimagine the role that complex algorithms play in the valuation of reseller labor and the ecosystem that they participate in. I worked as a research assistant on this project alongside PhD candidate Sara Milkes Espinosa.
Through this work, I developed lectures and readers about the invisible labor and material resources involved in the development and sustainment of AI-driven technologies. I also designed activities that engaged the 8 resellers in participatory art-based research methods to explore the role that complex algorithms play in the valuation of reseller labor and the ecosystems that they participate in.
Reselling Futures is an academic research initiative that investigates how algorithmic ecosystems are entwined with labor practices in online reselling. We are guided by theories in feminist economics and the future of work to promote more equitable and sustainable marketplaces. Algorithmic ecosystems in secondhand economies don’t exist in a vacuum: their effects are entwined with cultural practices, intersectional experiences and larger social systems. That’s why our methods follow a participatory and creative process to study how technologies like AI/ML and platforms influence the labor and lives of resellers.
Our goal was to foster communal capacity building. Our research is built on principles drawn from feminist economics and the future of work. Feminist economics provides a critical framework that interrogates traditional economic analyses and labor valuations, emphasizing the importance of recognizing all forms of labor, including those traditionally marginalized or unpaid. In conjunction with future of work principles, our research explores the transformational potential of collective study of technology to understand and change the ways it is shaping labor in secondhand economies.
Learn more about the project here!