Reframing the Narrative: Centering Women in Carceral Discourse
MS Design & Urban Ecologies Thesis — Parsons School of Design, The New School
Fall 2024 - Spring 2025This is the culmination of my masters thesis and thesis project.
The origins of this thesis project arose from my interest in Data Feminism, a theory of data science which seeks to acknowledge and challenge the power dynamics embedded in data science as a practice and the data produced under these power dynamics. Data Feminism also asks us to turn our attention to the places where, in a data-driven society, data gaps persist, and these data gaps are often gendered, racialized, or otherwise wrapped up in the marginalization of certain groups. This ultimately led me to a research and design project focusing on the experiences of incarcerated women, as I learned about data gaps surrounding this group, a group that has been historically invisibilized despite recent growth in its population and despite incredible and unique hardships faced by its members.
From initial ideation to final outcome, this project was a multimethod study utilizing research strategies from data analysis and processing, mapping, and literature review to case study analysis, interviews, and design iteration. In addition to the research contribution of this thesis, I created a final design product in the form of educational materials directed towards future legal practitioners with the primary goals of bringing attention and visibility to these often obscured narratives at a key point in the education of those with future decision-making and change-making power in the criminal legal system. These materials were created as a direct response to my research insight that efforts to change the current landscape of women’s incarceration are hindered greatly when professionals in the criminal legal system (like judges and lawyers) do not have thorough gender-responsive, trauma-informed education and training.
Duration: ~ 9 months
Tools: Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Python, RStudio, QGIS, Procreate