Decoding Cultures of Technology and Social Change (V3090)

15 credits, Level 5

Autumn teaching

On this module, you’ll examine the historic and modern cultures associated with computational technology.

You’ll investigate the ‘practices and cultures’ associated with technology. You’ll explore this through an alternative lens motivated by social justice perspective and praxis. You’ll respond to the challenges of today’s digital world, exploring:

• the history of women in technology
• bias and discrimination in computational systems
• inclusive design and design justice
• feminist HCI
• critical digital humanities
• computational ethics
• among others.

By decoding the cultures associated with computational technology, you’ll ask how we can collaborate more strategically across disciplinary boundaries to promote and imagine more socially aware digital and data futures.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 128 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2026/27. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.