Ruha Benjamin: "Race to the Future? From Artificial Intelligence to Abundant Imagination"

Public Lecture, Centre for Gender Studies in collaboration with the Feminist Salon @ Kaserne Basel

In this talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and eugenics emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world, often deadly impacts. To fight harmful systems and create a world in which everyone can thrive, we will have to imagine things differently. Drawing on the insights of Black and decolonial feminists, she critically examines tech-mediated inequities and engages with grassroots approaches to viral justice, offering a pragmatic and poetic approach to worldbuilding that invites each of us to consider the role we play in maintaining or transforming the oppressive status quo.

About the Speaker

Ruha Benjamin is Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024). Ruha earned a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College, MA and PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA’s Institute for Society & Genetics and Harvard’s Science, Technology & Society Program.  She is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, and President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. In 2024, Ruha was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship. For more info, visit ruhabenjamin.com.

Register by 18 October 2024: https://forms.gle/iL3UrtMQxLKQEzAz9

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