From Deepfakes to Cyberbullying: Understanding Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence

CLASS DESCRIPTION

For many young people, violence does not begin or end on the screen. It moves through the same hierarchies that shape the world, of gender, age, class, sexuality, and race, and is written into the technologies they use every day. They know these contradictions intimately. The internet can be both refuge and risk: a place to find solidarity, to speak freely, and to face harm that reaches into every corner of life. Yet their voices are rarely heard, especially when it comes to young people in all their diversity across Global Majority settings.

Young people are already reshaping what safety, justice, and accountability can look like. In Pakistan, a youth-led organisation builds peer-to-peer tools to prevent online violence. In Nepal and the Philippines, adolescents lead digital rights workshops that reach their schools before policies do. Across the Asia-Pacific, feminist and Queer networks create community safety systems and are innovating the future of the technology sector. Their work shows what can be done when it is built with and for those most affected.

This lecture is a bringing together of research across nine countries Global Majority settings on how TFGBV is impacting young people from 13-25. It particularly highlights the patterns and trends of girls and gender-expansive youth, as well the recommendations they have shared for what we can do about the issues they are facing. How can we serve as partners, advocates and allies in co-creating a world where TFGBV is prevented and its response systems are contextually grounded, child- and- survivor centered and meaningfully intersectional. A sneak peek into what this looks like: listening to young people, respecting their leadership, and dismantling the structures that continue to fail them. They are already showing us what accountability and care can look like. The task now is to follow their lead.

ABOUT OUR LECTURER

Leisha Beardmore (they/them) is a feminist researcher, practitioner, and community leader whose work bridges global mental health, trauma recovery, and human rights. A graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities, they are currently a Research Fellow at Stanford University, jointly with the School of Medicine and the Law School, where their research examines technology-facilitated gender-based violence and survivor-centred systems of care. For more than fifteen years, Leisha has led protection and gender-justice programmes across humanitarian and conflict-affected settings, including senior advisory roles with Amnesty International, the International Rescue Committee, UNFPA, and UNICEF. Their work foregrounds trans, queer, disabled, refugee, and Global Majority survivors’ experiences, advocating for decolonial, intersectional, and trauma-informed approaches to feminist practice and research.They are also the founder of Cadre, a Netherlands-based non-profit, and Art House Collective centring survivors and communities as agents of healing, resistance, and creative transformation. Leisha lectures and publishes internationally on feminist praxis, trauma, and justice, reimagining care through solidarity, creativity, and collective liberation.

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leishabeardmore/

We are committed to making our sessions as accessible as possible. If you are unable to pay the full amount for this class, please reach out to us via email at [email protected] and we will provide you with a discount code.