Hi! I’m Akane and this is my beautiful Staffy, Lina. I’m a researcher based at Monash University, Australia. For me, since childhood, feminism has shaped the way I see and experience the world. Now, as an adult and a researcher, I’m curious to know how digital culture shapes feminism’s impact for others in their everyday lives. You can read some of my published work here and here. 

Online culture is now such a crucial means for people to learn about gender, power, and ‘find their people’, but it can also be the source of intense feelings of anxiety, exclusion, burnout… even in spaces that are meant to be feminist. This project can hopefully start to answer some of the questions about where that leaves us. (And this uncertainty is why I chose the spooky image of the mirror on the homepage – what does it reflect? What does the future hold?)

I am extremely fortunate to be able to devote my teaching and research to thinking through these issues. Recent projects include partnering with Gender Equity Victoria to produce guidelines on feminist discussion in online spaces – accessible here. At Monash, I am also part of two research groups: the Gender and Media Lab, and the Digital Cultures Research Group. 

Hello, my name is Natasha (or Tash!) and that little pup is my best friend Willem! I’m now based in the UK. Not to be hyperbolic, but I’ve definitely spent a large proportion of my 24 years of life intensely online. As someone who grew up deeply interested in social justice and politics, I have always been attentive to the ways politics is practiced online. The cultural dimensions of digital culture and its impact on antiracist and feminist activism is particularly interesting to me, so I feel very lucky to be working with Akane on this project as well as being able to base my own research around this.

I have recently completed my PhD at Monash University, where I researched how social media culture has shaped understandings of race and practices of contemporary antiracism, for Asian-Australians. I am interested in the ways everyday social media users participate politically online through digital practices and knowledge cultures informed by self-branding and therapeutic doctrines.

Hi, I’m Emma (also an animal lover, but no pup in my pic). Both professionally, as a digital consultant, and personally, I’m a voracious consumer of digital media, with no interest in reducing my screen time. That said, I’m grateful for the offline spaces of my formative years where I could experiment with feminist vocabulary and identities without fear of being cataloged on the internet. Having worked across several mediums/fields, including radio, games, archives, consulting, and peacebuilding, I’m interested in how digital spaces (how they are built and facilitated) impact power and the ways we interact with each other. I also love experimenting with different forms of creative communication and storytelling. It’s been a delight to collaborate with Akane on the Feminist Not Fearless podcast.