Is the AI we use to understand the world might be restricting the way we view the world? AI systems are playing an increasingly important role in analysis, prediction, and decision-making. However, they are trained on mainstream and uncritical datasets that reproduce stereotypical gender roles, abilities, and behavioral patterns, reinforcing biases, which leads to a limited understanding of society.
Feminist work hard to fight against damaging narratives. These are stories designed to harm or limit us. They stymie our imagination and vision of what the world can be.
Sometimes we get called killjoys because of this. But the "joy" we kill is built upon pain, violence, and damage. We see this in narratives such as: Girls don't like sports. Women are bad at math. She asked for it. Feminists refute such world-constraining stories. In their place, we fashion realities that are caring, restorative, and life-affirming.
We celebrate and share the work of UC Davis feminist scholars who show us why we need queer, feminist collective movements. Take a moment to learn more about their work. They bring us hope, vision, and inspiration to continue forging paths towards liberation for all.
The creation of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are widely vilified as a crime against the climate. The massive amounts of energy, water, and natural resources used in their creation is well-documented--or at least as well as restrictive interpretations of proprietary knowledge will allow.
A Student Assistant IV is sought to work for the Feminist Research Institute. The Feminist Research Institute is dedicated to changing research culture towards justice and liberation. Scientific practices remain infused with the legacies of white supremacy, colonialism, and patriarchy. And we seek to change this. If this mission resonates with you, please read on!
The United States is home to 47.8 million immigrants, the majority of which have government-sanctioned status in the country. Immigrants make invaluable contributions to society and are owed dignity, just as are all humans. Despite this, immigrants are often exploited, abused, imprisoned, and deported--often through degrading and dehumanizing processes. People are losing protected status and being swept up and imprisoned without warning. This causes severe distress to them, their community, family, and friends.
AI, LLMs and the mobilization of large data sets are reshaping research, work, learning, and daily life. They are exerting influence on politics, media, business decisions, resource allocation, and education. This graduate course will apply a feminist, critical race STS lens to understand the operation and uses of AI in research. We will examine what historical impacts, cultural factors, and forces of oppression may be operating in AI and directing data flows.
We recognize that establishing trust and strong research partnerships takes time. Over the past three years, the EJLP has partnered 20 fellows from different community-based organizations with researchers at the UC Davis. For the 2025 EJLP, we invited former fellows to re-apply in order to continue building relationships with UC Davis researchers and advancing their research projects. This year, we are collaborating with the three EJ Leaders below.
We’re excited to release the Environmental Justice Leaders Program (EJLP) Limited-series Podcast! In this series, we interviewed the six 2024 EJ Leaders who participated in the fellowship program.
This summer, the Feminist Research Institute hosted interns due to the generous sponsorship of the CITRIS Banatao Institute. We wanted to highlight our summer interns, namely who they are, what their final project was, what they learned from this internship, and their goals.
Take a deep breath in. Go ahead. Now let it out… In that breath is 4 billion years of Earth's history. This was the beginning of Dr. Dawn Sumner's talk at the UCD Feminist Research Institute. Dr. Sumner is the FRI director and a geobiologist who currently conducts research about oxygen levels, cyanobacteria, and microbial mats in Antarctica. Her opening invited the audience to reflect on our interconnected relationship with geological time, one of the themes of the talk.
In this course, we will read Weathering by Arline T. Geronimus, the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project for 2024-25. Students will read the text with a feminist lens, with supplemental materials introducing perspectives from Black feminists. Goals for the class will be to frameworks, practices, and concrete actions students can take to counter injustice. We will also explore the relationship between intersectionality and justice, with attention to race, gender, disability, queerness, and nationality.
