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 nonbinary 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
Oliver L. Haimson.
2025. Trans Technologies.
MIT Press. (forthcoming book)
Oliver L. Haimson, Aloe DeGuia, Rana Saber, and Kat Brewster.
2024. Extended Reality Trans Technologies: Bridging Digital and Physical Worlds to Support Transgender People.
Proceedings of the ACM Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI) (will be presented at CSCW 2024).
[open-access link] [PDF] [video]
Hibby Thach, Samuel Mayworm, Michaelanne Thomas, and Oliver L. Haimson.
2024. Trans-Centered Moderation: Trans Technology Creators and Centering Transness in Platform and Community Governance.
Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, & Transparency (FAccT).
[open-access link] [PDF]
Avery Everhart, Kristi Gamarel, and Oliver L. Haimson.
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).
[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.
[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]
[my last name] at umich dot edu
Oliver Haimson
@transtechnologies
@oliverhaimson
Oliver Haimson
