Friday, 6th December - 11am Gavin Abercrombie: Seminar

Title: Equally Safe Online? Tackling Online Gender-Based Violence Through Participatory Design

Abstract:

Abusive language is increasingly prevalent online, and frequently targets women and others with minoritised identities. While computer scientists have attempted to tackle this by creating datasets and NLP tools, these have lacked theoretical grounding and stakeholder input. The EPSRC-funded project Equally Safe Online is a collaboration between Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh, and non-governmental organisations that work on the frontline supporting victims of Gender-Based Violence (GBV). This talk will touch on participatory design for NLP, perspectivist data practices, and the challenges and opportunities of co-designing NLP resources with stakeholders to detect and mitigate online GBV.

Bio:

Gavin Abercrombie (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Interaction Lab at Heriot-Watt University. He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester and is a founding organiser of the Workshop on Perspectivist Approaches to NLP (NLPerspectives).

Tanvi Dinkar (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Interaction Lab. She holds a PhD from the Institute Polytechnique de Paris, where she was a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher.