About

The DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, and Optimism) Network is a consortium of investigators working to envision a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future.

With funding support from the Mellon Foundation, the DISCO Network convenes a national network of scholars who conduct cutting-edge research, offer critical analysis, and develop optimistic solutions about the cultural implications of technology, racial inequality, histories of exclusion, disability justice, techno-ableism, and digital racial politics. As scholars, we integrate critical humanistic, social scientific, and technoscientific methodologies to address current issues within the academy, the technology industry, and beyond. We are committed to making our work free and available to the public.

Housed within the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, we consist of four labs across three universities: the Digital Afterworlds Lab (PI: Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan), the Humanities and Technoscience Lab (Co-PI: Rayvon Fouché; Northwestern University), the Digital Accessible Futures Lab (Co-PI: M. Remi Yergeau, University of Michigan), and the Black Communication and Technology Lab (Co-PI: Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland-College Park). Each lab functions both independently and as part of the broader network, engaging in research and dialogue about the intersections of digital technology, race, disability, gender, sexuality, and liberation.

From 2021-2027, the DISCO Network will support the next generation of marginalized scholars who challenge digital social and racial inequalities. We work collectively to provide mentoring and networking opportunities for BIPOC and disabled scholars, develop interdisciplinary undergraduate courses about the intersection of identity and technology, publish open-access research on topics of digital social inequalities, and host public programming to build the field of race, gender, disability, and technology studies.

DISCO Network Activities

  • Creating a mutual support and mentorship network for marginalized scholars in digital studies

  • Fostering research collaboration and support through four lab sites across three universities

  • Building an academic pipeline for students and junior scholars interested in pursuing training in critical digital methodologies

  • Offering lectures, roundtables, conferences, and other public programming on cutting edge digital topics

  • Publishing open-source, rapid-response writing on current events in digital racial politics

  • Teaching humanistic perspectives about the history of race, gender, disability, and technological exclusion to undergraduate students

What We Stand For

  • Digital Inquiry: We develop nuanced theory, innovative practices, and pioneering research about the digital world using interdisciplinary approaches.

  • Speculation: We create imaginative, transformative, and unconventional visions of an alternative equitable and inclusive digital future.

  • Collaboration: We believe in collaboration among different stakeholders in our digital world, including researchers, artists, technologists, policymakers, and practitioners.

  • Optimism: We reject deficit model scholarship on race, disability and technology and instead focus on resources, infrastructures, joy, creativity, and resilience.

  • Network: We invite anyone interested in exploring how digital technology perpetuates inequality and in creating new interventions to join our collective.

Accessibility Statement

The DISCO Network is committed to shifting conversations on the future of technology to position race, disability and justice at the center. We look both to disability culture and anti-racist organizing as providing models for interdependence, community engagement, and envisioning just spaces and futures. We understand access as a verb, as always-evolving and collective. We work to support access practices situated in action, re/imagination, relation, liberation, intimacy, and world building.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. The DISCO Network is fully conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Fully conformant means that the content fully conforms to the accessibility standard without any exceptions.

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the DISCO Network website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers by emailing disconetwork@umich.edu. We will try to respond to feedback within 2 business days.