2025-26 Aydelotte Foundation Faculty Seminar
Just Tech: Accessible, Sustainable Futures
Call for Applications
The Aydelotte Foundation invites applications from Swarthmore faculty and staff for participation in a year-long interdisciplinary seminar exploring how nonprofits, grassroots organizations, artists, and activists are coding, designing, and advocating for transparency, accessibility, and creativity in technology. Seminar participants will both analyze the existing political economy of tech and explore and imagine alternatives. Just Tech will be launched in collaboration with an external senior fellow and led in Spring 2026 by Timothy Burke, Professor of History. Early career, visiting, and non-tenure track faculty and staff are encouraged to apply.
In addition to the seminar leader and a postdoctoral fellow, the seminar will include six Swarthmore participants meeting six times each semester to read in the field and discuss participants’ research, complemented by public programming featuring guest scholars and artists throughout the year. We welcome ongoing or new projects pursuing research on technology and social justice across the disciplines (creative and critical data or AI studies, human computer interaction, computational humanities, data visualization). We also seek applications from those engaged in building technological tools that cut against the grain of “Big Tech,” as well as from those who study these alternative technological communities and practices. Participants will be expected to share their research on the Aydelotte website or other public forum, plan an event in 2026-27, incorporate seminar materials in their teaching, or other appropriate outcome.
Aydelotte faculty/staff seminars are designed to foster interdisciplinary scholarship and intellectual community, especially among junior scholars pursuing emergent fields or collaborative or multimodal research. The success of the seminar depends on the commitment of all participants through the year. In recognition of this commitment, each Fellow will receive a $5000 stipend and be eligible for funds for collaboration with community partners, as well as programming and/or curriculum development around their work for 2026-27.
Applicants should submit a letter of interest (500-750 words) and CV by May 9, 2025.
Please combine the letter and resume into a single PDF and name it LastName_FirstName_JustTech
To Apply go to bit.ly/Just_Tech_Faculty_Seminar
Questions? Inquiries about the faculty seminar series may be directed to aydelotte@swarthmore.edu
