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Recipes for Resistance

We are a team of early-career computer science education (CSE) researchers who identify and critically address inequities and bias in CSE to transform the space into a more equitable field.

Continuing with our cooking metaphors and inspired by a tool shared by many cultures across time and location, our logo is a molcajete-- a mortar made up of two uppercase R's with pestle inside. The two R's form two faces facing each other with a shared dream bubble with a heart inside.

The colorful dainty growth on the pestle represents the growth and healing we hope the podcast creates. The floral accents in and on the bowl represent a garden from which our conversations are growing, with ideas blossoming within as we mix them up in our “cooking”. The faces “built in” to the R’s signify that we are a part of the mortar, where we’re making something beautiful together. Lastly, the dream bubble represents the ways we’re imagining and dreaming up love.

A Multi-Modal Podcast Centering Justice, Joy, and Healing

The Recipes for Resistance Podcast is a multi-modal podcast series that provides a platform for minoritized voices to discuss how to foster equity in the CS and CS Education (CSE) fields. The podcast seeks to elevate voices and ideas beyond those traditionally centered, including CS teachers, parents, students, and community members whose lived experiences include doing work by and for their communities.

Podcast episodes are crafted around a kitchen table talk, where we informally discuss the topic of choice and share stories, all while centering justice, joy, and healing. As a multi-modal podcast, our episodes consist of three parts:

Part 1: Framing the Conversation

Part one will help listeners engage with the topic we’ll be discussing beforehand. It’ll include a carefully curated list of resources to become familiar with the topic(s) and guest speaker(s).

Part 2: The Kitchen-Table Talk

Part two is what most people associate with a podcast: an audio recording of varied length. We draw from the cultural tradition of “kitchen table talks” which designate the kitchen table for engaging in storytelling and conversations with family and the community 1 2 3. The kitchen table was “a protected, necessary space” for healing and transformation, providing a safe space from whiteness and trauma 4. Episodes will be kitchen table talk “styled” conversations to create 1) a space of comfort and trust for free-flowing dialogue and 2) a “table” for minoritized scholars and participants who may have been denied seats at the dominant group’s table 3.

Part 3: Follow Up

Part three will serve to recap some highlights from part two as well as provide additional resources mentioned, discussed, or relevant to the conversation had. If you’d like to contribute to an episode’s follow up, please feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to feature art, poetry, think pieces, and other forms of media inspired by the conversations from our podcast!

All podcast episodes and parts can be found on the podcast page.

This podcast is funded by a SIGCSE Special Projects Grant. SIGCSE is an ACM special interest group for computer science educators and CSE researchers.

Hosts

Briana Bettin, PhD

Briana Bettin (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor of computer science and cognitive and learning sciences at Michigan Technological University. Her research work broadly centers computing education with focus on human interests, impacts, and learning within our increasingly technological society. She is most interested in how to help us all learn to better live with, work with, (re)imagine with, and be represented equitably within the increasingly digital landscape of our world.

Victoria C. Chávez

Victoria (they/she) is a Joint PhD student in the Computer Science + Learning Sciences Program at Northwestern University. Their research interests stem from asking “How can we make computer science a safe and joyous experience for Black, Disabled, Indigenous, and Latine/x college students?”. Victoria is also broadly interested in issues of accessibility, civic tech, equity, and social justice.

Guest Hosts

Natalie Araujo Melo

Natalie Araujo Melo (she/they) is a light-skinned Afro-Latinx Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. Their interests lie in unmasking the ways systems of power influence harm in the creation, use, and expansion of technologies. She sees learning environments as places to grapple, heal, and transform our relations (with each other, with the human/non-human Other, with the world), which can ultimately shape the technologies around us.

Francisco Castro, PhD

Dr. Francisco Castro (he/siya) is a computing scientist and Computing Innovation Research Fellow at New York University. His research focuses on the human-centered design of creative technologies, collaborative spaces, and educational resources that empower people to learn and use computing, AI, and STEM skills in culturally sustaining ways. In his work, he partners with educators, artists, technologists, and learners to engage critical issues and topics of equity, ethics, education, creative practice, and technology design through—and within—creative production, learning design, and social justice.

Earl W. Huff Jr, PhD

Earl Huff, Jr. (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from the Clemson University School of Computing, and a MS and BS in Computer Science from Rowan University. Earl’s work focuses on human-centered approaches to designing and developing more inclusive and equitable technology, with a focus on accessibility. He also researches interventions to promote awareness, self-efficacy, and interest of career opportunities in computing to historically marginalized populations in K-12 spaces.

Gayithri Jayathirtha, PhD

Dr. Gayithri Jayathirtha (she/her/hers) is a Computing Innovation Fellow at the University of Oregon, Eugene, USA. Her work dismisses the neutral, non-political facade of computing and computing education and calls for centering justice issues within computing education. She currently partners with high school computing teachers, curriculum developers, and teacher professional development designers and facilitators to integrate and center justice within K-12 computing programs.

Stephanie Jones

Stephanie Jones (they/she/any) is a 5th year Computer Science and Learning Science PhD Student. She is a graduate of Villanova University with Bachelors degrees in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering and a minor in Computer Science, which led her to questions of equity within STEM learning. Their current research interests include intergenerational learning opportunities, building technologies that are personally relevant, and the relationships between (anti-)Blackness, computing, and liberatory futures. Blending research and ancestral knowledge she asks what does it mean to come from a legacy of people who fought to learn and teach?

Megumi Kivuva

Megumi is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, Seattle, Information School. They are interested in broadening participation in computing education through creating inclusive CS education environments. They specifically work with Black students and refugees where they aim to understand the barriers to accessing computing education and co-design interventions to make computing education more accessible to these communities. Their previous work includes CS integration in language learning, co-construction in CS classes, and teaching CS in various after-school settings.

Minji Kong

Minji Kong (she/her) is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on co-designing with practicing K-8 computing teachers tools that augment complex teaching tasks, such as personalizing in-class support for students, by blending aspects of Computing Education, Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, and Equity in Computing Education. Minji is a member of the Partner4CS team, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded interdisciplinary effort towards strengthening computing education within diverse Delaware K-12 populations. Her research is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Amber Solomon, PhD

Amber (she/her) is a Black woman and ATLien computer science researcher at Army FUTURES Command. She acknowledges the labor of Black, disabled, and otherwise minoritized thinkers and scholars that motivates her work and challenges her to think in generative ways.

Jennifer Tsan, PhD

Jen (she/her) is a researcher focused on supporting K-8 students and teachers in computer science. She is guided by the knowledge and experiences of those around her and stories of those who are marginalized.

  1. Fierros, C. O., & Bernal, D. D. (2016). Vamos a platicar: The contours of pláticas as Chicana/Latina feminist methodology. Chicana/Latina Studies, 98-121. ↩

  2. Guajardo, F., & Guajardo, M. (2013). The power of plática. Reflections, 13(1). ↩

  3. Haddix, M., McArthur, S. A., Muhammad, G. E., Price-Dennis, D., & Sealey-Ruiz, Y. (2016). At the kitchen table: Black women English educators speaking our truths. English Education, 48(4), 380. ↩ ↩2

  4. Bolding, A. C., Glover, K. T., Mouton, A. J., & Routt, J. D. (2022). Spades, dominoes, and hot combs: the kitchen-table talk that is necessary to redesign our PK-12 schools. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1-17. ↩

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