Tucked away on University College London’s main campus in Bloomsbury is the Institute of Making, the university’s in-house makerspace and materials library. Founded in 2013 by academics at UCL, the goal of the Institute of Making is to provide a place where students and staff can get hands-on experience with tools of all kinds –
I spent yesterday up at the University of Sussex at a free symposium hosted by the Feminist Approaches to Computational Technology (FACT///.) research network. Despite being one of my local universities I don’t make it up to campus nearly often enough, so it was great to meet some of the researchers based at the Sussex
As part of this year’s EMF Camp I organised a workshop to share information on how to build inclusive makerspaces. In the first part of the workshop I presented some of the results from my research on diversity and inclusivity issues in makerspaces, then I opened the floor up to a roundtable discussion with other
I’ve written a practitioner reflection piece for the Journal of Peer Production Issue 12, where I talk about the efforts that maker communities around the world are making to be more inclusive and accessible. It’s a special journal issue on the institutionalisation of makerspaces, so check it out for a bunch of other interesting papers too!
I’m currently working as a research assistant for a team at UCL’s Institute of Education that’s investigating the educational and identity equity potential of makerspaces for young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Back in July we organised a research symposium at UCL’s Institute of Making. Read their write-up of the event here.