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: Dissociative Worldmaking

with Lucas LaRochelle

This lecture-performance introduces the concept of ‘dissociative worldmaking’, a methodological and aesthetic framework to understand the interactions of queer/trans data with artificial intelligence. Grounded in my artistic practice—specifically the countermapping platform Queering the Map and its generative AI offspring QT.bot—I advocate for strategies of data opacity that resist the extractivism and standardization inherent to machine learning.

Weaving together auto-theoretical reflections on ketamine, heartbreak and data moderation with writings by Edouard Glissant, Lauren Berlant, and Hannah Baer, I reframe dissociation not as a pathology but as a generative strategy for processing the “too muchness” of an archive laden with both trauma and ecstasy. I argue that by embracing the failure of linear causality, machine learning can be appropriated to help us navigate the information overload of the present without resorting to reductionism. This lecture-performance proposes ‘dissociative worldmaking’ as an aesthetic strategy that loosens attachments to normative time and subjecthood, allowing for new forms of sense-making within a world in crisis.

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 creative technologist. Their work is concerned with internet cultures, online communities, and artificial intelligence. They are the founder of Queering The Map, a platform for archiving queer and trans experience in relation to place.

They have exhibited and lectured internationally, including at the Guggenheim Museum (USA), Transmediale (Germany), Ars Electronica (Austria), MUTEK (Canada), Mozilla Festival (UK), Museum of Design Atlanta (USA), Honor Fraser Gallery (USA), Luxembourg Art Week (Luxembourg), Krupa Art Foundation (Poland), and the PHI Center (Canada), amongst other galleries, festivals and institutions.

Their work and writing has been published in The Sociological Review, Media Culture and Society, Log Magazine, Koozarch, Dreaming Beyond AI, Futuress, MIT’s Immerse, Queer Sites in Global Contexts, QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK #3, Diagrams of Power, and IWAKAN, amongst other books, journals and publications.