[SIGCIS-Members] passing of Halcyon Lawrence

[Ben Peters]

Thank you Elizabeth. Please permit me to share below the statement drafted
by her friend, volume coeditor, and my colleague, Mar Hicks:

Ben
--

Dear Computer Fire Collaborators and Supporters,

It is with heavy hearts, shock, and sadness that we observe the passing of
our colleague and friend Dr. Halcyon Lawrence on October 29, 2023.

Halcyon was an Associate Professor at Towson University at the time of her
death, having earned tenure early, and had been excited to put down roots
in Maryland while keeping a strong connection to her original home,
Trinidad and Tobago. In addition to being an incredible scholar whose work
on accent bias in automated technologies opened up new questions and areas
of study, she was well known and loved in her field, and many other fields,
for her kindness and generosity of spirit, her intellectual fearlessness,
and her willingness to mentor, help, and support her fellow scholars.

Halcyon's razor sharp insights and her dedication to building more
inclusive communities and technologies, especially speech technologies,
impacted multiple disciplines. Her contributions to the Computer Fire
volume powerfully influenced how we thought about the relationships between
speech, empire, and the technical disciplines of sound. All of her
colleagues, friends, and especially her students have lost a truly special
person with her untimely passing, as the many tributes pouring in on social
media show. We four feel--as surely many of you do too--honored to have
known her.

Her funeral service will take place in Maryland on November 8, details here:
https://vaughncgreene.com/tribute/details/7087/Halcyon-Lawrence/obituary.html#tribute-start

In lieu of sending flowers, her family has asked people to contribute to a
scholarship fund for a student in need:
https://gofund.me/f8043a8a

Dr. Safiya Noble has also noted that, despite her groundbreaking work, Dr.
Lawrence did not have a Wikipedia page at the time of her death. If anyone
here regularly edits Wikipedia and would be willing to start a page for
her, or to contact a group like WikiWomenInRed who might assist with this,
that would be a powerful way to help ensure that her scholarship and legacy
live on and continue to reach new audiences. Please share as appropriate.

We are very sorry to be the bearers of such awful news.

Signed,

Mar, Kavita, Ben, and Tom
Your Computer is on Fire Editorial Collective

[image: ProfHalcyonLawrenceComputerFireConference.jpg]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 2:11 PM Elizabeth Petrick via Members <
members at lists.sigcis.org> wrote:

> Dear SIGCIS,
>
> I am very sad to report that Halcyon Lawrence has passed away. Some of you
> may remember her fantastic talk on voice recognition technology and accent
> bias at the SIGCIS conference at the CHM in 2017 or may know her essay in *Your
> Computer Is on Fire*, on "Siri Disciplines".
>
>
> https://redmonk.com/kfitzpatrick/2023/10/31/in-memory-of-dr-halcyon-lawrence/
>
> Best,
> Liz
>
> -------------
> Elizabeth Petrick
> Co-Director, STS Program
> Associate Professor
> Department of History
> Rice University
> http://elizabethpetrick.com/
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-- 
Benjamin Peters

Hazel Rogers Assoc. Prof., Media Studies, U of Tulsa (land acknowledgment
<https://utulsa.edu/university-of-tulsa-land-acknowledgment/>)
Affiliated Fellow, the Information Society Project, Yale Law School
Book: Your Computer is on Fire
<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-computer-fire>, Soviet Internet
<http://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Network-Nation-Information/dp/0262034182/>
, and Digital Keywords <http://amzn.to/1ToHD4v>
More: farm media <https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/NMS/current>, smart tech
<http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/11/smart-media-is-a-pain/>, Russian
hackers <https://hackersinitiative.yale.edu/>, small
<https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/infinity-could-not-be-smaller>∞
<https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/infinity-could-not-be-smaller>,
Benjaminpeters.org
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