Fernanda R. Rosa, PhD, is an assistant professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech, based on Tutelo and Monacan lands. Her current work is focused on internet governance and design, social justice, and the global South. She uses a novel method defined as code ethnography, founded on decolonial, feminist, and science and technologies studies, to shed light on the inequalities embedded in internet infrastructure and protocols that shape how our data circulates online. Her work unveils how internet protocols render Indigenous networks as invisible, and aims to design infrastructures with participatory design methods with Indigenous communities in Latin America to reimagine internet interconnectivity.

Project Description

Interconnecting Indigenous Peoples: Design Justice and Data Sovereignty in Latin America is a project that seeks to intervene in the colonization and monetization over Indigenous data that has increasingly disseminated as internet access expands in Latin America. Through participatory design research with Tseltal and Zapoteco people in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico, this project researches data sovereignty focusing on redesigning internet interconnectivity technologies centered on Indigenous knowledges, values, and lived experiences.