Research

Queer joy as a digital good

This project foregrounds queer joy as a practice of personal and collective resilience amidst a socio-political landscape of increasing queerphobia, arguing that queer joy in online spaces is a digital good for users, platforms and policy. In so doing, the project will centre queer users, their knowledge, and their experience.

The project will build connections with and between communities, practitioners, and policymakers to explore how digital technologies can work for people and society, including through the development of a standard that platforms and policymakers can refer to as a benchmark for their provision. The project will also bring academics, user-communities, practitioners, and policymakers together in developing critical media literacies, highlighting the role of joy as an act of resistance against oppression.

Team

Dr Lexi Webster, Deputy Director of Digital Humanities, University of Southampton

Dr Dawn Woolley, Research Fellow, Leeds Arts University

Dr Madeleine Steeds, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University College Dublin

Dr Ben Dalton, Principal Lecturer, Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University

Dr Genavee Brown, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Northumbria University

Dr Sarah Clinch, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Manchester

Dr Carolina Are, Innovation Fellow at the Centre for Digital Citizens, Northumbria University