York University’s Science and Technology Studies (STS) Departmental Seminar Series continues on March 8 at 12:30 p.m., features Glendon Assistant Professor Alison Harvey. Harvey will present a talk titled “Squeezed in, Bled Out: The Leaky Pipeline, Marginalized Bodies, and Metaphors of Loss in Technoculture Spaces.”
Harvey’s research and teaching focuses on issues of inclusivity and accessibility in digital culture, with an emphasis on games. She is the author of Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context (2015, Routledge) and Feminist Media Studies (2019, Polity). Her work has also appeared in a range of interdisciplinary journals, including Games and Culture, International Journal of Cultural Studies and Feminist Media Studies.
The March 8 discussion will focus on the several challenges disproportionately affecting women in academia, specifically within STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) which address the metaphor of the pipeline. Drawing from Harvey's research article “Marking a grade: Feminine lack, inclusion, and coping strategies in digital games higher education,” barriers faced by women in games production have been firmly established, including well-documented harassment and material forms of structural discrimination such as gender pay gaps. Harvey will speak to the inequality within STEM and how it remains in failing to account diversity and intersectional barriers that are widely white, male cultures. Building on existing critiques, Harvey will address the gap by exploring the experiences and perspectives of students studying games subjects in five U.K. universities.
Harvey’s discussion will explore how the pipeline metaphor works to support exclusionary discourses and practices in this technocultural site. She will draw out themes the pipeline metaphor evokes, and the unspoken elements effaced in this discourse illustrated by her participants.
Now in its 28th year, the STS Research Seminar Series features seminars on a wide range of STS-related topics. Sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology Studies and coordinated by its members, the series has hosted more than 500 speakers from Canada and around the world.
All events in the series will run on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 2 p.m. They are all free and open to the public, with no registration required. The talks are delivered via Zoom in the fall term, with delivery for the winter term to be determined. To receive a Zoom link for this event and others in the series, contact STS Professor Conor Douglas, seminar series coordinator, by email at cd512@yorku.ca.