Grand Challenges Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Daniel Gardner, has been appointed to the Equity Committee for the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI). SIGCHI is the “world’s largest association of professionals who work in the research and practice of human-computer interaction,” serving around 3000 members worldwide.

Gardner is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in human-computer interaction (HCI), social and information sciences, and media, game, and security studies. His research explores how values and structures of power influence our interactions with everyday digital technologies. Now in his second year at Chapman University, he is collaborating with Dr. LouAnne Boyd in the Fowler School of Engineering to study issues such as the representation of diverse identities in digital games.

The Equity Committee collaborates with SIGCHI leadership and local conference organizers to develop codes of conduct and equity guidance for the society’s annual meeting and other events. “Our priority is to provide meetings that are inclusive along several intersecting axes of possible oppression or exclusion. And we want to build institutional memory so that future efforts to maintain equity do not start from scratch,” says Dr. Gardner.

Gardner previously served on the diversity working group of the Digital Games Research Association.