TY - JOUR AU - Birhane, Abeba AU - Guest, Olivia PY - 2021/02/08 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Towards Decolonising Computational Sciences JF - Kvinder, Køn & Forskning JA - KKF VL - 29 IS - 1 SE - Essays DO - 10.7146/kkf.v29i2.124899 UR - https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/124899 SP - 60-73 AB - <p>This article sets out our perspective on how to begin the journey of decolonising computational&nbsp;fi elds, such as data and cognitive sciences. We see this struggle as requiring two basic steps:&nbsp;a) realisation that the present-day system has inherited, and still enacts, hostile, conservative, and&nbsp;oppressive behaviours and principles towards women of colour; and b) rejection of the idea that centring&nbsp;individual people is a solution to system-level problems. The longer we ignore these two steps,&nbsp;the more “our” academic system maintains its toxic structure, excludes, and harms Black women and&nbsp;other minoritised groups. This also keeps the door open to discredited pseudoscience, like eugenics&nbsp;and physiognomy. We propose that grappling with our fi elds’ histories and heritage holds the key to&nbsp;avoiding mistakes of the past. In contrast to, for example, initiatives such as “diversity boards”, which&nbsp;can be harmful because they superfi cially appear reformatory but nonetheless center whiteness and&nbsp;maintain the status quo. Building on the work of many women of colour, we hope to advance the&nbsp;dialogue required to build both a grass-roots and a top-down re-imagining of computational sciences&nbsp;— including but not limited to psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, data&nbsp;science, statistics, machine learning, and artifi cial intelligence. We aspire to progress away from<br>these fi elds’ stagnant, sexist, and racist shared past into an ecosystem that welcomes and nurtures<br>demographically diverse researchers and ideas that critically challenge the status quo.</p> ER -