Feminist HCI has been rapidly developing in East Asian contexts in recent years. The region's unique cultural and political backgrounds have contributed valuable, situated knowledge to the agenda. However, the very factors that ground these perspectives also create significant survival challenges for researchers in East Asia. These include a scarcity of dedicated funding, the stigma of being perceived as less valuable than productivity-oriented technologies, and the lack of senior researchers and established, resilient communities.
Grounded in these challenges and our prior collective practices, we organized a meet-up at CHI 2026. Check out our meet-up proposal at ACM DL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772363.3778806.
🔥 More than 40 participants joined our meet-up. It was a pleasure to meet everyone and hear about the different questions, experiences, and commitments that brought us into the room. Across feminist HCI and other areas of critical computing, there was much we wanted to learn about one another’s work.
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Here, we bring together some of the tensions and hopes that stayed with us, with phrases and notes from the discussion woven throughout. We hope they offer something to think with. The content below was organized by Runhua. Feel free to reach out to her if you have questions or would like to discuss any of the ideas further.
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Many of us work with feminist, queer, decolonial, and other critical theories. They help us notice things we might otherwise overlook and give us language for experiences that can be difficult to explain. Yet there are also moments when the theories we know do not quite account for what we encounter.
Working from East Asia brings these moments into focus. The theories we draw on carry the histories and social conditions in which they developed. Asking how they “apply / sit in tension” in East Asian contexts means spending time with both what they help us understand and what remains difficult to explain.
“Departure from theory; not redoing or abandoning” has stayed with us. It leaves room to value what we have learned while allowing our research to take us somewhere we did not expect. What might change in a theory when we take these experiences seriously? “What are the theories & thinking from East Asia? How?” opens up further possibilities for “Non-Western theory building.” There is work to seek out, read together, and bring into conversation with our own.
Working across languages is familiar to many of us. So is “missing meaning after translation”: the feeling that an idea has changed, even when the words seem correct. Something that makes sense in one language can require a long explanation in another and still feel incomplete.
“Translating in English; meaning is lost e.g. Korean / Chinese” speaks to a difficulty that runs through our academic lives. When English is the language in which we are expected to make our work understood, how much of an experience can we carry into it? What happens to the parts that are harder to translate?
“Language of publication; location of conferences; ways of social.” These everyday conditions affect what we read, whose work we encounter, and whom we have opportunities to know. Research can be deeply relevant to us and still remain outside the publications and networks we regularly turn to.
“Acknowledging & practicing citational justice on works coming from Asian context” asks us to pay attention to these absences in our own reading and writing. Finding work, reading across languages, and understanding its context take time. We would like to have more opportunities to do this together.
There was frustration in our conversations about how often feminist work requires an explanation before the research itself can be discussed. We may need to “introduce the most basic information, e.g. gender,” respond to a “lack of understanding of feminism,” or explain why something dismissed with “you are too sensitive” deserves serious attention.
Working across academic contexts can add another layer of explanation. “Why east asian culture, need to justify” captures the pressure to establish why our cultural contexts matter. It can be tiring to keep explaining the grounds from which we speak, especially when other experiences are more readily accepted as a starting point for research.
Funding and institutional recognition bring further demands. When feminist research is “misunderstood / low valued,” finding “languages to frame feminist work so that it can be funded” becomes part of doing the work. How much room do those terms leave for the questions we actually want to ask?
We keep thinking about the energy this takes, and what it means to have colleagues who understand why the work matters without needing us to start from the beginning every time.
“Be angry” belongs in our conversations. There are things worth being angry about, and we hope our communities can make room for that anger. We should be able to speak about frustration, admit that something has gone wrong, or ask for help without having to make those feelings easier for everyone else to hear.
There was also a desire for “finding/amplifying joy & fun in the midst of all the shitty situations.” We are glad this was part of the conversation. “collaboration / gathering / fun activities / talk / meet / read” offers plenty of reasons to spend time together. We need opportunities to get to know one another beyond the difficulties we share. This was our first meet-up of this kind, and getting to organise it and meet so many like-minded people felt empowering. We cherish the joy we grow and gain here.
“Proud about yourself you are feminist!” is another phrase we want to keep.
We would love for the connections made at the meet-up to have somewhere to go. Regular online gatherings, reading groups, shared resources, and opportunities for mentorship could give us ways to remain in touch between conferences. “Connections with local advocates and practitioners” could also help us learn from feminist work happening beyond academia.
As these relationships grow, we also want to keep asking who can participate and who might still feel excluded. Our future conversations should include calls for “intersectional and trans-inclusive practices”, “alliances with marginalised groups”, and greater attention to “differences in resources and privilege” within our own communities.
There are questions of safety, too: how we support people working on sensitive topics and facing harassment, abuse, or threat, and when visibility may bring additional risks. These concerns belong in the everyday decisions we make about how to gather and care for one another.
“Keep going impact need time.”
Working in critical computing, we sometimes struggle to describe the impact of our research in the terms most readily recognised in HCI. Our contributions may not come through faster systems, greater efficiency, or technologies adopted at scale. They may involve questioning an assumption, helping people name an experience, or making space for concerns that have received little attention. What changes through this work can take time to become apparent and can be difficult to measure.
This led us to think about what we value in our own research, and how we recognise its impact. Perhaps impact can also be found in relationships that last, resources that remain available, people who feel less alone, and ideas that gradually become easier to express and share. These are contributions we want to be able to recognise and support, even when they do not produce an immediate or easily measurable outcome.
The connections we made at the meet-up were themselves part of this. Finding so many people with related commitments, exchanging experiences, and encouraging one another felt empowering. Having someone to turn to, think with, or simply speak openly with can make a difference to how we continue our work. We hope to give these relationships room to grow, and to value the care and effort that sustain them.
Thank you to everyone who brought their experiences, questions, and joy into the room. There is much here that we are still thinking through, and we are grateful to have people to think with.
Opening Remarks: Prof. Shaowen Bardzell will open the meet-up with reflections on the development of Feminist HCI and its implications for researchers working in East Asia.
Warm-up: Participants briefly introduce themselves and share their perspectives on: “What does Feminist HCI mean to you?”
Group Discussion: An open discussion on navigating Feminist HCI in East Asia, including challenges, experiences, and strategies for sustaining feminist research and communities.
Open Networking: Participants continue informal conversations and explore opportunities for collaboration.
You do not have to be a feminist to participate in the Feminist HCI meet-up. We welcome allies and believe that our work is more powerful in collaboration. Please take a moment to review our Code of Conduct.
Interested in more feminist HCI activities at CHI 2026? Check out our sister meet-up 🫰: CHI Stitch ’n B*tch, A Feminist HCI Meet-up
For more Feminist HCI resources and events, please check our umbrella homepage 👀
