'Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen'

Join the editors Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin and contributors Hayri Dortdivanlıoğlu, Marjan Khatibi, Erin McElroy, Vernelle A. A. Noel, & Jessica L. Olivares for a presentation of the book Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen at the store. The contributors to Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen examine new and emerging technologies that are often referred to as creepy to outline the possibilities for a politics and ethics of technological relations that do not reduce all instances of technological creep to surveillance.

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires, and smart forests toward dreams of feminist futures. Contributing authors further illuminate what is otherwise obscured, assumed, or dismissed in characterizations of technology as creepy or creeping. Considering diverse technologies such as border surveillance and China’s credit system to sexcams and home assistants, the volume’s essays and artworks demonstrate that the potentials and pitfalls of artificial intelligence and digital and robotic technologies cannot be assessed through binaries of seeing/being seen, privacy/surveillance, or harmful/useful. Together, their multifaceted and multimodal approach transcends such binaries, accounting for technological relations that exceed sight to include touch, presence, trust, and diverse modes of collectivity. As such, this volume develops creep as a feminist analytic and creative mode on par with technology’s complex entanglement with intimate, local, and global politics.

Contributors. Neda Atanasoski, Katherine Bennett, Iván Chaar López, Sushmita Chatterjee, Hayri Dortdivanlioglu, Sanaz Haghani, Jacob Hagelberg, Jennifer Hamilton, Antonia Hernández, Marjan Khatibi, Tamara Kneese, Erin McElroy, Vernelle A. A. Noel, Jessica Olivares, Nassim Parvin, Beth Semel, Renee Shelby, Tanja Wiehn

Neda Atanasoski is Professor and Chair of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and Associate Director of Education for the Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (AIM). Atanasoski’s interdisciplinary research has focused on feminism and AI, feminist and critical race approaches to science and technology studies, AI and the future of work, militarism, and human rights and humanitarianism. She is the author of Humanitarian Violence: The U.S. Deployment of Diversity (2013), co-author of Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures (2019), and co-editor of Postsocialist Politics and the Ends of Revolution (2022) and Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen (2025).

Nassim Parvin is a Professor at the University of Washington (UW) Information School where she also serves as the Associate Dean for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access & Sovereignty (IDEAS). Dr. Parvin’s interdisciplinary research integrates theoretically-driven humanistic scholarship and design-based inquiry. Her papers have appeared in design, HCI, and STS venues. Her designs have been deployed at nonprofit organizations and exhibited in venues such as the Smithsonian Museum. She is the co-author and co-editor of the book Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen (2025). She is an award-winning educator and served as one of the lead coeditors of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience from 2018-2023.

Hayri Dortdivanlıoğlu is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dartmouth Society of Fellows, affiliated with the Studio Art Department. His research explores the intersection of craft, architecture, and technology, with a focus on how established frameworks have historically separated theoretical knowledge from material and embodied practices in architectural discourse. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), he investigates the relationship between architects and their tools, employing weaving as both metaphor and method to highlight the entanglement of thinking and making in creative practices.

Marjan Khatibi is a visual designer, researcher, and Adobe Education Leader specializing in Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Animation. Her interdisciplinary work promotes gender equity by using immersive media to convey complex ideas and foster empathy and social change. She has received grants from organizations such as Unity and Meta Immersive Learning, supporting her exploration of virtual environments for positive societal impact. Marjan’s work has earned international recognition, including the "Outstanding Achievement Award for VR Animation" at the World Film Carnival – Singapore and "Best Student Film" at Anmtn! – Online Animation Awards, Ukraine. Her animations have screened globally, including in the UK, Canada, India, Ukraine, and the U.S., sparking cross-cultural dialogue. Marjan has served as a jury member at the Cinequest Film & VR Festival and presented her research at AIGA, CAA, DRS, SECAC, BEA, and UCDA conferences.

Erin McElroy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington, where their work focuses on gentrification, technology, empire, and racial capitalism, alongside housing justice organizing and transnational solidarities. Erin is author of Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times (2024) and coeditor of Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (2021). At UW, Erin directs Landlord Tech Watch, and is also cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.

Vernelle A. A. Noel, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Computational Design and Director of the Situated Computation + Design Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Noel is a design scholar, architect, and educator whose research engages with critical questions of embodiment, technological practice, and knowledge production—using design and making practices as sites of inquiry - to develop new frameworks, methods, and expressions. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Mozilla Foundation, and ideas2innovation (i2i), among others. She is a recipient of the Digital FUTURES Young Award for exceptional research and scholarship in the field of critical computational design, and has a TEDx Talk titled, “The Power of Making: Craft, Computation, and Carnival.”

Jessica L. Olivares is a medical and cultural anthropologist whose research investigates how medical systems, surveillance infrastructures, and policing technologies regulate everyday life, particularly for those living at the intersection of racialized criminalization and systemic neglect. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas Medical Branch jointly appointed in the Department and Institute of Bioethics and Health Humanities and the Center for Addiction Sciences and Therapeutics. Trained at Rice University, her Ph.D. research combined ethnographic fieldwork with critical theory, and she has since deepened this approach through interdisciplinary collaborations at the intersection of health humanities, bioethics, and science and technology studies. She is currently researching how medical systems and policing converge to govern life through infrastructures of surveillance and care.

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