Congratulations to Lynn Dombrowski, who successfully passed her dissertation topic proposal defense on Friday, February 14, and is now ABD (All But Dissertation)! Her topic is Food Justice and Interaction Design:

As a domain, human computer interaction and interaction design of issues of moral and ethical import. Frequently, the topics of social justice (e.g., hunger, poverty, and racial, class, and gender equality, etc.) figure heavily within these works, but the underlying concepts of social justice (e.g., recognition, reciprocity, distribution, enablement, etc.) are more implicit. Given that these are issues that HCI cares about, it becomes incumbent on designers and researchers to investigate what we mean by social justice and untangle these ill-defined concepts. In my work, I ask how do concepts of justice in terms of issues of hunger impact the design space for the designed artifacts? In order to investigate this question, I will conduct participatory design workshops in California and Georgia with hunger-focused nonprofits and community members.