Dr. Melo presented her SILS Lightning talk on Friday, September 18, 2020.
Lightning talks by faculty members include individual brief (10 minutes or less) presentations on their research interests and projects.
View the full SILS Lightning Talks playlist on YouTube.
The EITM Lab has an opening for a fully funded Ph.D. student at SILS beginning Fall 2021. Funding is secured through a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award that will support a graduate student. The project is entitled, “Equity in the Making: Investigating Spatial Arrangements of Makerspaces and Their Impact on Diverse User Populations.“
I am currently recruiting a doctoral student with research interests in makerspaces, critical making, inclusive and equitable making, and/or virtual reality. This Ph.D. student will join a research team exploring topics connected to the spatial design of makerspaces in academic libraries. I invite applicants with interests across any or all of these areas to apply.
SILS Ph.D. applications are due December 15th, 2020.
The Maker Movement is a social phenomenon that has generated excitement around tech-centric making and learning throughout the world since the mid-2000s. Hailing from Silicon Valley, the Maker Movement has inspired hundreds of libraries across the US to integrate makerspaces into their own ecosystems to further support users’ learning and discovery. While the affordances of the Maker Movement have been highlighted extensively over the past decade, the limitations and drawbacks of this movement have been largely overshadowed. The Maker Movement has popularized a narrow, classist, predominantly white, and heteronormative conceptualization of maker culture. Makerspaces, like libraries, are not neutral, but rather are imbued with ideologies stemming from Silicon Valley that consequently dictate who makes, why making occurs, and what is considered making. This edited collection centers the limitations and challenges emerging from this particular brand of ‘maker culture,’ and emphasizes the critical work that is being done to cultivate anti-oppressive, inclusive and equitable making environments.
Many authors have focused on how to start a makerspace and/or the benefits of integrating one within a library. Alternatively, this edited collection captures how librarians and educators have disrupted and re-made their makerspaces in response to the constraints of the Maker Movement’s ‘makerspace.’ This collection offers readers a critical examination of library makerspaces at the site of praxis: theory, reflection, and action. Particularly, critical considerations around race, age, class, gender, sexuality, power, and ability will be centered in this volume. As such, the intended audience for this body of work are librarians, educators, administrators, and library professionals who work with(in) or are interested in library makerspaces.
This talk centers on the limitations and challenges emerging from this particular brand of “maker culture,” and emphasizes the critical work that is being done to cultivate anti-oppressive, inclusive and equitable making environments. The Maker Movement has inspired hundreds of public, school, and academic libraries to integrate makerspaces into their own ecosystems. This social phenomenon purports an enthusiasm and techno-optimistic approach to engaging with the world with STEM-rich technologies, and consistently overshadows the material limitations and drawbacks that this movement simultaneously purports. The Maker Movement has popularized a narrow, classist, predominantly white, and heteronormative conceptualization of maker culture. Makerspaces, like libraries, are not neutral, but rather are imbued with ideologies stemming from Silicon Valley that consequently dictate who makes, why making occurs, and what is considered making. Specifically, this talk will highlight the voices within the edited collection, Re-making the Library Makerspace Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices. The book captures how librarians and educators have disrupted and re-made their makerspaces in response to the constraints of the Maker Movement’s “makerspace.” This collection extends a critical examination of library makerspaces at the site of praxis with critical considerations around race, age, class, gender, sexuality, power, and ability will be centered in this volume.
October 2-3, 2020
