Sasha Costanza-Chock – Keynote Speaker

Sasha Costanza-Chock (pronouns: they/them or she/her) is a scholar, public interest technologist, designer, and media-maker who is widely known for their work on networked social movements, transformative media organizing, and design justice.

They are currently a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as Senior Research Fellow at the Algorithmic Justice League. 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 latest book, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need was published by the MIT Press in March 2020. In addition to two books, Sasha is the author of eight peer-reviewed journal articles, three additional peer-reviewed papers in conference proceedings and juried research series, seven book chapters, six non-refereed research reports, and multiple articles that translate research for popular audiences.

Sasha Costanza-Chock is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and a Faculty Affiliate with the MIT Community Innovators Lab. They have served as P.I. on over four million dollars of research grants, led product development teams for innovative grassroots media and ICT projects for two decades, developed and taught courses on community-led design, networked social movements, and other topics for hundreds of undergraduates and graduate students, mentored many M.S. and PhD students at MIT, and regularly give keynote talks at both scholarly and popular conferences around the world.

Sasha sits on the Digital Equity Fund Council for the City of Boston, is a proud board member of Allied Media Projects, and is a Steering Committee member of the Design Justice Network.