OII Pride Lecture 2026

About

We’re delighted to have two speaker’s for this year’s OII Pride lecture!

Please join us at the Schwarzman Centre or via Zoom for talks by Dr Ewan Soubutts and Lucas LaRochelle.

1-2pm: “Twink Death” – A Deep-dive Into the Sociotechnical Relationship Between Ageing and Queerness Online

with Dr Ewan Soubutts

People’s relationship to ageing is often complex and situated in intimate social rituals that make our transfer into different life stages more manageable. Online personas and the way that we are perceived by others often force us to relinquish control of these rituals and succumb to labels placed on us through online discourse, that we may otherwise avoid. The pseudo-stereotype of “Twink Death” in internet meme culture is one such application of the imposition of such labels and a lens for this discussion. This talk explores our relationship between ageing online and labelling in predominantly queer spaces and our sense of control and autonomy over who we present ourselves as online.

2-3pm: TITLE tbc

with Lucas LaRochelle

 

3-4pm: Drinks reception

Join us for an opportunity to network over drinks and nibbles.

A variety of snacks and drinks will be available, if you have any dietary requirements please contact events@oii.ox.ac.uk

 

Dr Ewan Soubutts is a Departmental Lecturer at the OII, specialising in Human-Centered Computing and Digital Health. He also holds Honorary Research Fellow at positions at the UCL Interaction Centre and Bristol Interaction Group in the UK. Ewan studies the intersection of technology within and between age groups in society, looking at how people provide support that is mediated via digital communication tools like smart speakers and wellness apps, allowing for individual and collective understandings of technology adoption, digital health and care challenges (such as life transitions) and information acquisition over the internet.

Lucas LaRochelle is a designer and researcher whose work is concerned with queer and trans digital cultures, community-based archiving, and artificial intelligence. They are the founder of Queering The Map, a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space. They have lectured, facilitated, and exhibited internationally, recently at the Guggenheim Museum (USA), Ars Electronica (Austria), Museum of Design Atlanta (USA), among many other galleries, festivals and academic institutions.