Drawing from his book, Trans Technologies (MIT Press, 2025), Oliver Haimson will discuss how technology creates new possibilities for transgender people, and how trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology. Mainstream technologies often exclude or marginalize transgender users, but when trans creators take technology design into their own hands, transformative possibilities emerge. Through in-depth interviews with over 100 creators of trans technology—including apps, games, health resources, extended reality systems, and supplies designed to address challenges trans people face—Haimson uncovers what trans technology means and explores its possibilities, limitations, and future prospects. He examines the design processes that brought these technologies to life, the role of community in their creation, and how they empower trans individuals to create their own tools to navigate a world that often fails to meet trans needs. This work highlights the successes and limitations of current trans technologies, identifies gaps still to be addressed, and investigates how privilege, race, and access to resources shape which trans technologies are created, who benefits, and who may be left out. Finally, he charts new directions for design and innovation to drive meaningful social change, inviting us to rethink the relationship between technology and marginalized communities.
About the Speaker:
Oliver Haimson is an Associate Professor at University of Michigan School of Information and author of Trans Technologies (MIT Press 2025). He conducts social computing research focused on how marginalized individuals and communities, especially trans and queer people, use social technologies and envision future technologies.
About the Series:
The New Civic Terrains Speaker Series convenes public conversations with thinkers and practitioners working at the frontiers of digital civic life. Through lecture and dialogue, the series highlights diverse ways of knowing and making, from empirical research and policy critique to creative practice and grassroots organizing. The series creates a collective opportunity for reflection, debate, and collaboration, fostering cross-disciplinary exchange and inviting audiences to imagine new civic imaginaries for a technologically mediated world.
About the Digital Civics Initiative:
The Digital Civics Initiative at Northeastern University is an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to understanding and reshaping the civic dimensions of digital technologies in contemporary life. The initiative brings together scholars, educators, activists, technologists, and artists whose work engages questions of technology and education, labor and automation, governance and public institutions, surveillance and data justice, environmental sustainability, community organizing, and human-centered approaches to machine learning and artificial intelligence.