Nigerian-American artist and researcher whose work highlights the social relationships and power dynamics behind data collection, Mimi Onuha joins the WBI show. We spend a lot of time in the beginning of this episode exploring Mimi’s undergraduate thesis Death on Facebook, how different cultural practices around death and birth are allowed in western society and mediated in the digital. We think together about how these rituals-fundamental to being human-are happening on commercial platforms we know we don’t own or govern yet connect on this *public* forum anyway because we year to be seen.

Out the ashes of this loss, we dream about building alternative sociotechnical systems to further liberation, think about the racial tension between Black Americans and African immigrants in STEM academia, ending with a cypher round on hope and possibilities.

For show notes and to learn more, navigate to https://americanassembly.org/wbipodcast