DEI Panel 2025

Repositioning DEI: The Urgent Reimagining of DEI in an Era of Retrenchment

“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equally in value no matter what their color.”
— Maya Angelou

ADBIS 2025 DEI-Panel Hybrid Session
In situ: ADBIS 2025 Venue, Tampere, Finland
Online: Zoom Session

Moderators

Panagiota (Yula) Fatourou, University of Crete, Greece
Genoveva Vargas-Solar, CNRS, LIRIS, France

Introduction slides [PDF]

Context and Motivation

As DEI programs become common in academia and industry, many remain anchored in metrics of representation—counting heads, not shifting paradigms. This panel explores how we might move beyond surface-level inclusion to fundamentally transform the production model in computing sciences. It invites a bold conversation on building racially, socioeconomically, and gender-diverse communities, integrating both Western and non-Western epistemologies, and defending hard-won progress against growing anti-progressive narratives.

Panelists will discuss how to create environments where diversity is not just present but empowered to reshape the discipline—its questions, methods, and impacts. Together, we ask: What would it take to truly decolonize computing? How can DEI evolve from policy to practice, from access to epistemic justice?

This year’s conference will feature a panel discussing the strategies to reposition DEI programs in an historical moment where humanistic values that we had taken for granted are being questioned. Addressing the future of DEI in computing sciences is not just important—it is urgent, especially in what we can now name as an era of retrenchment, backlash, and rising anti-progressive sentiment.

Why This Panel Now?

We are witnessing a moment where efforts toward equity and inclusion in science and technology are being questioned, undermined, or actively dismantled. From public discourse to institutional policy, a growing wave of anti-DEI rhetoric paints inclusion as ideological overreach rather than structural justice. At the same time, crises—climate, economic, geopolitical—are intensifying, and the power of computing technologies is expanding into every aspect of life.

Retrenchment is not neutral. It reproduces the status quo, often at the expense of those already marginalized. In computing sciences, this means preserving production models that privilege narrow, Western, elite, and masculinized ways of knowing and building technology. It means ignoring how racism, extractivism, and epistemic violence are encoded into algorithms, platforms, and infrastructures.

Yet this moment also presents an opportunity. It is a time to move beyond surface-level inclusion and reimagine DEI not as a numbers game, but as a radical rethinking of how knowledge is produced, who gets to shape technology, and whose futures are made possible through it.

Because to protect what has been achieved, we must build what does not yet exist—a computing science that is genuinely equitable, plural, and accountable to the world it shapes.

Objectives

This panel aims to examine the future of DEI in computing sciences amid increasing political and institutional pushback. As anti-progressive narratives gain ground, it is crucial to reflect on how we can defend and reimagine DEI as a transformative, not merely performative, force within academia and technological fields.

A second objective is to move beyond representation and focus on epistemic justice—rethinking who produces knowledge, what perspectives are valued, and how computing can be reshaped through feminist, decolonial, and Global South lenses. Inclusion must become a principle of knowledge-making, not just recruitment.

Finally, the panel seeks to support early-career researchers by offering strategies, role models, and language to navigate and shape institutions from within. By fostering intergenerational dialogue, it invites a shared vision for a more plural, just, and resilient future in computing.

Format

This panel insists that DEI is not an add-on, but a transformative force. It asks:
– How do we defend progress without becoming defensive?
– How do we expand our imagination of justice in the face of backlash?
– And how do we design institutions, curricula, tools, and communities that sustain not only diversity, but dignity and dissent?

We have invited panellists who have contributed to support and imagine diverse, inclusive and equitable communities. The discussion will unfold in four structured segments:

  1. The moderators will introduce the panel’s theme, objectives, and guiding questions to frame the dialogue.
  2. Panelists will each present a 5-minute statement addressing one or more teasing questions proposed by the moderators.
  3. Moderators will incorporate audience questions in the third segment to deepen the discussion on pivotal issues raised.
  4. Concluding the session, panelists will share their final thoughts and key takeaways, summarizing the insights gained from the dialogue.

Teasing questions

  • What does a truly transformative DEI program look like beyond hiring numbers and demographic reports? Can we imagine DEI as a framework for rethinking what computing science is and does?
  • In the face of rising anti-DEI sentiment, how can institutions maintain (or even deepen) their commitment to equity without falling into defensive postures or diluted messaging?
  • Whose knowledge gets to define the future of computing? How can we challenge the dominance of Western, male, elite perspectives in setting the research agenda?
  • What are the risks of institutionalizing DEI without transforming power structures? Can inclusion efforts inadvertently reinforce the very hierarchies they aim to dismantle?
  • How can we integrate Global South, Indigenous, and decolonial approaches into computing without tokenizing them or treating them as peripheral?
  • How do we resist the “neutrality” myth in computing and confront the political dimensions of code, data, and design choices?
  • What would a DEI program centered on epistemic justice rather than diversity metrics prioritize—and what would it de-prioritize?
  • What does solidarity look like across race, class, gender, and geography in the struggle to transform computing sciences? How do we practice it in real institutional terms?
  • What role can early-career researchers play in sustaining or advancing DEI, and how can institutions support rather than exploit their labor?
  • What is one radical idea or practice you’ve seen—or would like to see—that redefines DEI in your field or institution?

References

Core Theoretical & Foundational Works

  • Sandra Harding (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives. Cornell University Press.
  • Donna Haraway (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3).
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Routledge.
  • Ruha Benjamin (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Press.
  • Safiya Umoja Noble (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press.

DEI, Data Justice & Algorithmic Equity

  • Virginia Eubanks (2017). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Press.
  • Catherine D’Ignazio & Lauren F. Klein (2020). Data Feminism. MIT Press.
  • Emmanuel Moss et al. (2021). Assembling Accountability: Algorithmic Impact Assessment for the Public Interest.Data & Society Report.
  • Lina Dencik et al. (2019). Data Justice: Exploring the Implications of Data-Driven Societies. Social Justice Journal, 46(4).

Decolonial Computing & Global Perspectives

  • Lilly Irani et al. (2010). Postcolonial Computing: A Lens on Design and Development. CHI Proceedings.
  • Paola Ricaurte (2022). Technocoloniality: Digital Infrastructures and Epistemic Injustice in Latin America. AI & Society.
  • Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejías (2019). The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford University Press.

Institutional DEI, Resistance & Policy Analysis

  • Evelynn Hammonds & Claudia Rankine (2021). On DEI Fatigue: A Conversation. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  • Sara Ahmed (2012). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press.
  • Tressie McMillan Cottom (2017). Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. The New Press.