CS4ALL network meeting: DIKU’s journey towards more diversity

Join DIKU’s community for women and other gender minorities for a nice afternoon, where we will eat lunch together and talk about diversity and equity in computer science.

All employees and students at DIKU are welcome at CS4ALL's events regardless of gender. You need to sign up for the event before 21 May so we can order lunch for you.

Program:

12:30-13: Lunch sponsored by DIKU

13-14: Talk by Professor Pernille Bjørn: Diversity in Computer Science and the continues journey for DIKU

14-15: Discussion about future events, future communication, and potential student representatives

Sign up for the event here.

About Pernille Bjørn's talk:

Computer science is the academic foundation and practice that determines how digital technologies are designed, developed, and introduced into peoples’ lives. Digital technologies shape society, life, and work and influence how people think and act with technology in all aspects of life. In a democracy it is vital that the people who create technology mirror the society’s diversity, to ensure that new digital technologies do not constrain people’s agency but enable people to act and take part in society.

In this presentation, I will contextualise historically the unbalanced gender representation which exists in computing in Denmark (concretely DIKU), while introducing our Design Artefact approach for change focusing on creating, re-writing, and challenging narratives about computer science. Through concrete examples of design artefacts, I will demonstrate the design principles and how we used Makerspace Methodologies to allow people with diverse backgrounds to see themselves as successful within the field. Further, I will show how these artefacts were used for data collection and interventions.

Finally, I will situate important equity concepts within the computing domain which can assist organizations - such as universities - to improve the conditions for diversity, equity, and inclusion – and invite you all to join the continuous journey for DIKU.

Find more information about CS4ALL and join our mailing lists here.