Connecticut College's Ammerman Center Presents Scholar and Activist Sasha Costanza-Chock

Connecticut College’s Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology will host Sasha Costanza-Chock for a guest lecture on social movements and design justice at 1 p.m. on Nov. 1 in the 1941 Room in the College Center at Crozier-Williams.

Costanza-Chock’s talk, entitled “Transformative Organizing from #TechWontBuildIt to #DesignJustice,” describes the emergence of design justice, a field of theory and practice that observes how the design of objects and systems influence benefits and burdens between various groups of people. Design justice focuses on the ways that design creates and/or challenges systems of oppression. It is also a growing social movement that aims to ensure equity and recognition of community-based design traditions, knowledge, and practices.

Sasha Costanza-Chock (pronouns: they/them or she/her) is a scholar, activist, designer, and media-maker, and currently Associate Professor of Civic Media at MIT. They are a faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, faculty affiliate with the MIT Open Documentary Lab and creator of the MIT Codesign Studio. Their work focuses on social movements, transformative media organizing, and design justice. Sasha’s first book, “Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement” was published by the MIT Press in 2014. Their new book, “Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need” will be published in early 2020. Sasha is a board member of Allied Media Project and a Steering Committee member of the Design Justice Network.

This talk is a part of (Re)Generation, this year’s theme for the work of the Ammerman Center, which is looking back on the successes of its 30-plus year history and how it needs to change moving forward to support a more equitable and conscientious field.

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October 31, 2019