 So I guess I'll preface this by saying that this is actually a really intimidating place to now say all this because I'm Following all the people who kind of inspired this thought process, and it's also something that's still kind of Hopefully getting more coherent in my mind and that I've only really talked about online Which is also an interesting Perspective that bringing it analog in front of a lot of people. It's actually really terrifying right now But I think that's also really interesting and fitting for this conversation Because what I want to talk about today is actually thinking about risk and the role that it plays in archaeology particularly in just digital archaeologies And the way that risk has kind of been rebranded today as the badge of honor It's this critical step in art and in the scientific method and And I think all of that kind of fails to recognize the true force and pervasiveness and a lot of contacts of the underlying Structural inequities of risk and who is forced to take on more risk than others so archaeology being at the Intersections of art and science also finds itself framed by this kind of discourse of Art of risk as innovation and art as innovation for art as risk rather Which seizes on technology to address a lot of the big challenges that we want to take on as archaeologists thinking about things like decolonizing archaeology and but also Thinking about the ways that we can make our discipline more inclusive And well, this is no longer really a recent shift. I think we're just starting to talk about the ways in which We are thinking about well-being now in relation to risk and inclusivity and diversity And so ultimately when we think about public and translational and engaged scholarship today It's demanding individuals to be in a spotlight that in a way that we haven't been before And also embedding them in kind of new cyber channels for abuse that we don't really understand completely today So now I'm behind and so I think there's a lot that's being shared online In particular about the way that in which engaged scholars and public scholars are thinking about their role and the risk that they're also taking on in these spaces What I'm interested in exploring further is the role that was taking is play Taking in the development of digital disruptions more in the activist sense rather than the Silicon Valley sense of disruption Particularly the experience of leveraging intersectional identities to make and take up space for multi-vocality So at the junctions of queer feminists and maker or DIY cultures among others There is a concentration of fundamentally creative Inclusive disruptions through digital and hybrid platforms with the sort of transhumanist spirit in a lot of ways Of thinking about how we unbecome or move beyond some of the limitations that we've had in the past However, these approaches approaches also reveal an all too intimate relationship between structures of exclusion and risk-taking Where the former tends to read the ladder by pushing individuals who don't conform To and therefore can't move easily through traditional funding structures and career models To actually utilize non-conventional means of research and dissemination But at the risk of actually attracting greater oppression and systematic othering So the interplay then between creativity disrupting normativity and risk warrants greater attention and critical consideration as a critical force That's shaping archaeological method in theory today the thoughtful and strategic employment of technologies that create a media to defy to remix to subvert in a lot of ways Can confront the the ways that we've shaped people in the past But also the way that we think about who is our who are archaeologists today Confront authority as wall in archaeology But also create a space or a platform in order to kind of support these kinds of inclusive programming or projects These projects are of course critical nodes of transformation and really inspiring and valuable in their own right But I think what's really interesting about them is the people behind them and their experiences That merit further consideration because they're actually drawing attention to the ways that Intolerance and risk and abuse in a lot of cases is playing on their experiences of archaeology in the way that they engage with this discipline An ever-growing archive of harassment and abuse only begins to a document In a lot of ways the physical and emotional toll that targeted members of the archaeology community are forced to take on It's true that there are structures of discrimination and intimidation and brassman that have a really uncautally long history in archaeology But the ways that technology is kind of reshaping and manipulating those forces is Kind of urgent and and concerning in a lot of ways And I think it goes contrary to a lot of our hopes that we would kind of move beyond those things We've actually opened a door to a whole kind of Pandora's box of abuse instead And it's not always necessarily really kind of what we think of as awkward forms of abuse or violence But also the accumulative impact of absorbing these levels of ignorance and bias and hatred on a day-to-day basis And the pressure to apologetically make other people feel okay above their ignorance as well That's I'm finding crippling both students, but all the way up to established always today The lack of recourse of course means that there's no protection and it's extremely problematic from the perspective that we're now Mandating through jobs and through institutions that people take on this risk without forming any way of protecting them from it And this is kind of tapping into also a really problematic pre-digital history of the inequity and responsibility placed on women people of color and indigenous scholars to take on kind of public archaeology and all those kind of forms of abuse and inequity that comes with it This should of course never been acceptable back then, but I think now it's going to be a lot more complicated to actually handle that So digital technologies were sold to us Primarily as a kind of a democratizing tool in archaeology that we could transform some of those inequities that have been inherited or disciplined for a very long time And transform research communication dissemination all these good things But when those kind of cracks started to form of the inequities and abuse It was also rebranded and marketed to us as something that everyone goes through This idea that everyone has to go through this to be innovative and to be successful in academia and in archaeology And all of its forms that exist today But the lines of privilege and power are far more insidious in our technology trends to archaeology today And I think we are failing in a lot of ways in order to recognize and actually transform those lines of abuse And I think that this is really visible and though the kind of deluge of individuals that are reaching their breaking points today And you can see this particularly in the ways that people are blogging and using social media to talk about their experiences But at the same time they're then attracting a lot of abuse back on themselves through this process So I think in a lot of ways that we have to start to take this a lot more serious It's a warning of what's been termed as a critical crisis in academia and archaeology more broadly And it's going to certainly undermine any application or transformation of digital or hybrid archaeology is however you want to frame it To be more inclusive and more diverse in the future And the stubbornly independent do-yourself kind of mentality that has given shape to a lot of this really important work in digital disruptions of archaeology I think needs to kind of also be reframed as a more collective approach to taking on these inequities and Particularly drawing on Those who have benefited for a very long time for it from these lines of privilege To actually start to make space and make new critical reflections on the way that we're Putting people into this kind of line of fire That's all I have at this point But certainly it's something that I'm still kind of thinking through so I'm very happy to take on thoughts and feedback in any form