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
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