OLIVER L.
HAIMSON,
Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Designing and defining trans technologies

In this line of research, my research team and I have been thinking about what it means for a technology to be a "trans technology," and how such technologies could be designed. Transgender and non-binary people face substantial challenges in the world, ranging from social inequities and discrimination to lack of access to resources. Though technology cannot fully solve these problems, technological solutions may help to address some of the challenges trans people and communities face. In this work, we use interview methods to highlight areas for future trans technological innovation and community-based participatory design methods to design and build trans technologies.

Selected Publications


Avery Everhart, Oliver L. Haimson, and Kristi Gamarel. 2024. Technology for Transgender Healthcare: Access, Precarity & Community Care. Social Science & Medicine (special issue on Unequal Care: Trans Medicine and Health in Dangerous Times).
[open-access link] [PDF]

Oliver L. Haimson, Kai Nham, Hibby Thach, and Aloe DeGuia. 2023. How Transgender People and Communities Were Involved in Trans Technology Design Processes. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23).
[open-access link] [PDF] [video]

Lauren Wilcox, Renee Shelby, Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Oliver L. Haimson, Gabi Erickson, Michael Turken, and Beka Gulotta. 2023. Infrastructuring Care Ecologies: How Trans and Non-Binary People Meet Health and Well-Being Needs through Technology. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23).
Best Paper Award
[open-access link] [PDF] [video]

Oliver L. Haimson, Dykee Gorrell, Denny L. Starks, and Zu Weinger. 2020. Designing Trans Technology: Defining Challenges and Envisioning Community-Centered Solutions. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Best Paper Award
[link] [PDF] [blog] [video] [video] [images]

Tumblr was a Trans Technology: The Meaning, Importance, History, and Future of Trans Technologies
Oliver L. Haimson, Avery Dame-Griff, Elias Capello, Zahari Richter
Feminist Media Studies, 21(3), 2021 (first published online October 2019), p. 345-361
[open-access link] [PDF] [blog]

Oliver L. Haimson, Justin Buss, Zu Weinger, Denny L. Starks, Dykee Gorrell, and Briar Sweetbriar Baron. 2020. Trans Time: Safety, Privacy, and Content Warnings on a Transgender-Specific Social Media Site. Proceedings of the ACM Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI) (CSCW 2020).
[link] [PDF] [video]