OVERVIEW

Alexis-Carlota Cochrane (she/they) is a PhD Candidate and Sessional Instructor (Communication Studies and Media Arts) at McMaster University researching how digital platforms perpetuate gendered and sexuality-based digital harms, and how queer approaches can help us rethink and resist sociotechnical power relations.

Her research interests include Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV), Digital Harms and Vulnerabilities, Critical Data and AI, Platform Studies, Digital Humanities, and Feminist and Queer Theory.

Some of Alexis-Carlota’s research can be found in Rivista di Digital Politics, Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities (IDEAH), and in an edited collection entitled “You’re Muted”: Performance, Precarity, and the Logic of Zoom, published by Bloomsbury. She co-authored the Canadian Women’s Foundation’s Challenging Gendered Digital Harm Research report, which provided Canada’s first nationally representative, disaggregated data on experiences of gendered digital harm.

Currently, Alexis is the Digital Scholarship Coordinator at the Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship. Her research affiliations include the Critical Data Studio, the DISCO Network, housed within the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, the Digital Feminist Network of Canada (DigFemNet), Northwestern University’s Centre for Latinx Digital Media, and the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory. She supports the Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities as a liaison and incoming steering committee member.

Alexis-Carlota has contributed to groundbreaking initiatives addressing digital harm at both national and global levels. Her expertise has informed UN dialogues on digital rights and gender equity, shaped online harms policy recommendations, and supported community organizations working on digital safety and justice. She has collaborated with leading organizations such as the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and the Anti-Racism Directorate of Ontario to advance intersectional approaches to equity, safety, and justice in digital contexts.

In 2025, she received the King Charles III Coronation Medal in recognition of her work on Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence and its contributions to advancing gender justice in Canada.