Keynote conferences > Black Futures in the Metaverse

Black Futures in the Metaverse

Tuesday 13 June from 3.45pm to 4.45pm

Palais Hirsch, Grand Amphitheatre

Courtney Cogburn is an associate professor at Columbia University's School of Social Work and a member of the Columbia Population Research Center. She uses a transdisciplinary research strategy to improve the characterization and measurement of racism and to examine the role of racism in producing racial health inequalities. Dr. Cogburn's work also explores the potential of media and technology to eradicate racism and eliminate racial health inequalities. She is the lead creator of 1000 Cut Journey, an immersive virtual reality experience about racism, which premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival at the University of Helsinki. She is Chief Equity and Director of Learning the Earth with Artificial, an NSF Science and Technology Center. She is also Associate Director of DEI and co-chair of the Computational Social Science Working Group at the Columbia Data Science Institute. She is currently developing projects focused on the future of black people, imagination, radical rationality and healing. Courtney Cogburn completed postdoctoral training at Harvard University's Robert Wood Johnson Health & Empowerment; Society Scholar Program and the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, earning a PhD in education and psychology, and a MSW from the University of Michigan and a BA in psychology from the University of Virginia.

Presentation : There Are Black People in the Future. The absence of Blackness in both fantastical and practical imaginings of the future are countered by proclamations that Black people will not only exist in the future but will and are actively shaping the future. Global tech giants have rejuvenated the concept of the “metaverse” and are staking claims in a virtual ecosystem where physical, virtual, and augmented realities converge. While the realities of a metaverse are currently more speculative than practical, the current trajectory may lead us to replication and exacerbation of existing social inequities. In this talk, Dr. Cogburn asks if the metaverse will be a catalyst for radical, social transformation? She will also explore the use of Afrofuturism as a framework for untethering speculative Blackness from whiteness and social inequities. She does this to reimagine the possibilities of freedom in the active practice of designing and living Black futures.

Debate moderated by Cécile Faliès, Vice-president of research at the University of Paris 1

With the support of Columbia Alliance-Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne