Advancing Feminist Digital Rights: Insights from the FIRN and R&R Symposium

• In April 2026, the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) and the Resistance and Resilience (R&R) project hosted a three-day symposium focusing on the intersection of feminist research and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV).
• The event, supported by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), sought to foster decolonial digital rights and shared knowledge.

Core Objectives

• To amplify community-led feminist internet research findings.
• To analyze how structural inequalities and colonial power dynamics shape both tech-facilitated violence and environmental injustice.
• To create counter-narratives for global advocacy, policy, and strategic organizing against overlapping oppressions.

Thematic Sessions

• Day 1 (Undoing Power): Examined methodology as a decolonial and feminist practice.
• Day 2 (Unpacking Intersectionality): Critiqued conventional TFGBV research frameworks to better reflect diverse experiences of violence.
• Day 3 (Resistance and Refusal): Explored 'disassociation' as a strategic response to dominant Global North frameworks.

Documentation and Impact

• Facilitated by Christy Alves Nascimento, the symposium provided a space for activists and scholars to reflect on the implications of their work.
• The formal report is divided into four sections: Undoing power, At the intersections, Refusal as resistance, and a postscript titled 'Witnessing the witnessers'.