About Me
Mardiya Siba Yahaya is a multi-genre technologist,
researcher and community movement builder.
I am sociologist, researcher, and community movement builder. I work on making connections between community infrastructure and creative forms of refusals against surveillance technologies. I draw from methods of opacitiy, artistic experimentation, fiction, and design justice.
Within my current journey, I am research communal negotiations against surveillance, while building the Flowers and Gardening Studio (F&G studio), a space I co-create and experiment playful technologies, and visual imagery.
Within my current journey, I am research communal negotiations against surveillance, while building the Flowers and Gardening Studio (F&G studio), a space I co-create and experiment playful technologies, and visual imagery.
My research expands into the policy realm. I have investigated how policymakers can embed community sensibilities in AI and innovation policies , supported through Mozilla's initiative with GIZ African Union. I have written different policy briefs on data governance, surveillance, and infrastructure design.
Explore my work leading the technical implementation of design justice principles in civic tech designed to improve urban experiences for marginalised communities in a 3-year project funded by FCDO.
Opacities, Resistances and Refusals Against Surveillance
For the most part, I spend my time dissecting Glissant's opacity as a socio-technical resistance and refusal technique marginalised communities use against visibility-based capture and surveillance.
I have published works related to the paradox of visibility, exploring opacity as an artisitic technique, and presented this at leading industry conveninings.
Read and Cite My Work Popularising Opacity in Digital Rights
Black Africans’ Right To Opacity and Society’s Violent Will to Know
Decolonizing Bodies : Existing Beyond Time and Place: Understanding Visibilities Online
The Sexuality of Technology: Memories of Existing in Techno-Societies
How Plants Teach Us Opacity
Making Space for the Unkind
Presentations and Talks
My Presentations
- MozFest House : Flowers and Gardening: Techniques of Opacity as a Method to Trusthworthy AI
- Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium Paris : Flowers and Gardening: Techniques of Opacity as Community Participation Methods to achieving Trustworthy AI
- Digitalisation, AI and Feminist Futures: Res-ponsability, Risk and Refusal
- From Policy to Practice: Evaluating Data Policy Outcomes in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia . Watch the recording here
Upcoming Talks
Read My Extended Porfolio of Work
My work is expansive, some may not make it into this page. So I have linked my original archive, where you can find my movement building, community mobilization, learning design and facilitation work linked. You may also explore my past lives, and the ones in between.
Also check out my fellowship work here