News/Research

Miyoko Conley Receives Outstanding GSI Award

31 Mar, 2021

Miyoko Conley Receives Outstanding GSI Award

Miyoko Conley, a TDPS and DE graduate student at Berkeley, has been awarded the Outstanding GSI Award for her work as a GSI in NWMEDIA 151AC: Transforming Tech. Miyoko researches transnational cultures, fan studies, and affective technologies, with a focus on Japanese and Korean popular culture. She is an experienced playwright and theatre performer with an interest in gaming as well. She has produced works at the intersection of theatre, gaming, and online spaces.

Transforming Tech studies major tech industry controversies and heavily criticized tech products, policies, and effects, including technologies used at the U.S.-Mexico border, social media platforms’ spread of disinformation and fake news, racial bias in algorithms, and internet trolling and harassment. The course also examines tech companies’ long-running tendency to exclude women and non-Asian minorities, and how tech workers have occasionally come under fire for the industry’s harms. Students in the course brainstorm and design their own interventions into the workings of the tech sector to make it more inclusive, equitable, and diverse.

Speaking about her time as a GSI, Miyoko states: Within BCNM, I've been privileged to engage with students who come from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds. I am always blown away by how they apply what they learn about new media to bettering the world around them, and I hope my students have learned as much from me as I have from them. I'm truly honored to receive this award.

Congratulations Miyoko!