"Feminicide and digital activism: building a feminist community of practice"

In recent years, digital maps and data visualisations of feminicide -understood as gender-related violent deaths of women- have emerged across Latin America. Amongst these is a Google Map of feminicide in Uruguay (http://feminicidiouruguay.net), which I started as part of my feminist activism in 2015. Through the concept of feminicide, these digital objects convey specifically feminist knowledge and, as a methodology and a practice, they also examine and challenge power, reveal context, and mobilise affect and emotion to promote social and political change. In this sense, they can be understood as feminist data visualisations, aligned with feminist principles for data visualisation (D'Ignazio and Klein 2016).
Feminist scholars have advocated methodologies that rehabilitate quantification (Oakley 1998), reclaim vision (Haraway 1991), re-envision Geographic Information Systems (GIS) (Kwan 2002; see also Nafus 2014; Verran 2011) and the re-purposing of digital cartography for inventive and engaged cultural and social research (Lury and Wakeford 2012; Lammes 2016). In light of this, mapping and measuring feminicide can be considered part of a feminist methodology of "measuring violence to end violence" (Walby and Towers 2017), or "making the dead count" (Tate 2007).
Yet, despite the increased visibility of the issue of feminicide promoted by feminist activists, and some advances in public policy, feminicide is still "terrorizing women" in Latin America (Fregoso and Bejarano 2010), the "most violent region for women" (UNDP and UN Women 2017). The violence has so far not diminished, and the difficult questions about how wider and deeper transformations in public awareness, literacy and public attitudes can be achieved remain highly relevant.
It is in this context that I wish to investigate -empirically and methodologically- the methodologies, forms and effects of digital cartographic practices in feminist activism and gender advocacy relating to feminicide; to situate this work in a wider field of digital cartography for advocacy (see Dorling and Fairbairn 1997; iconoclasistas 2016; Playful Mapping Collective 2016; Marres and Rogers 2008; Tactical Technology Collective [2013] 2017; Take Back The Tech n.d.); and to specify what is distinctive about feminist approaches to digital cartography. In this sense, this research will make a contribution to scholarship on activism around feminicide, feminist methodologies and practices, and digital cultures and digital cartography.
Understanding methods as performative, as having a role in making reality and making a difference (Coleman and Ringrose 2013, 113), I propose a research methodology that is itself a form of activism insofar as my project investigates methods of issue advocacy in order to inform their development. This practice-led project aims to research feminist data visualisations both through field research of on-going advocacy practices, organisations and projects and through my ongoing practice as a feminist activist, drawing on my experience and my existing connections with other activists mapping and counting feminicide in Latin America to set up a series of learning activist encounters.
There is a clear need to develop deeper and more sophisticated understandings about the effects and potentials of activists' methodologies and practices around feminicide. This project builds on my MA research, where I engaged with affect/emotion theories and feminist and new materialist approaches, to explore the affective practices and politics of feminist activists counting and mapping cases of feminicide in Ecuador, Mexico, Spain and Uruguay. The aim is to significantly expand the scope of my research in this area, and to deepen my empirical and conceptual engagement with digital cartography as an "engaged method."