Digital Futures Focus Period on FemTech and Feminist Tech

Examining the intersections of technology with health, wellbeing, and social justice

A series of events from 12 May to 13 June 2025

The Digital Futures FemTech and Feminist Tech focus period will develop and demonstrate a wide range of ideas for what emerging technologies might look like in a range of areas if they were built with a different perspective to the ‘norm’ and the accompanying values.

Read more on FemTech and Feminist Tech Focus Period website.

The Digital Futures FemTech and Feminist Tech focus period will bring together researchers from far-ranging fields who are passionate about health and wellbeing, fairness and equity, design and biology, sociology and psychology, along with pioneers in digitalisation and digital technology. The Digital Futures FemTech and Feminist Tech focus period will develop and demonstrate a wide range of ideas for what emerging technologies might look like in a range of areas if they were built with a different perspective to the ‘norm’ and the accompanying values (see e.g. D’Ignazio, & Klein, 2022; Costanza-Chock, 2020), that is, who technologies are designed for and how they account for the lived realities in which technology use is situated.

This focus period is an effort to start to shift these norms by initiating conversations and networks between scholars, tech industry, healthcare practitioners, and society at large. The focus period will comprise of a series of activities, including:

1. A week-long summer school for PhD students taking feminist approaches to digitalisation across areas of relevance to Digital Futures, 
2. A 3-day workshop between scholars, industry, and societal stakeholders including keynote speakers, panels and facilitated breakout discussions. May 26-28
3. A dissemination and issue sharing workshop with practitioners 
4. A public exhibition of work that challenges norms of approaches to digitalisation including TedX style talks from experts across disciplines
5. A Hackathon focussed on feminist approaches to digitalisation 

Connecting the growing commercial interest in FemTech (a term referring to software and technology-driven services tailored towards women’s health) with scholarly debates regarding feminist technology, the focus period advances knowledge production that gets at fundamental academic issues in technology design while also engaging with society for impact that aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals regarding health, wellbeing, and gender equality.