On 25 and 26 May 2016, Sabina García Peter participated in the colloquium “Latin America–United States: Bridges Of Understanding.” The event was organized by the Observatory on Latin America (OLA) at the New School in New York along with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).

More than 400 research groups and researchers from Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe met to participate in various working groups.

In the working group on Gender Studies, Sabina García Peter presented the work of the Margherita von Brentano Center with the aim of gathering new prospects for academic collaboration in Gender Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. 

On the same trip, she also met with two of the current moderators of the FemTechNet network, T.L. Cowan (Canadian Visiting Lecturer at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Digital Humanities Fellow at Yale University, and Chair of Experimental Pedagogies at the New School of Media Studies at the New School) and Jasmine Rault (Assistant Professor of Culture and Media, also at the New School). FemTechNet is an active network of scholars, artists, and students working at the intersection of technology, academia, and feminism in many different disciplines such as Science & Technology Studies (STS), Media and Visual Studies, art, and Gender, Queer, and Ethnicity Studies. They are especially focused on creating feminist technological innovations and promoting digital practices in teaching and research.

The Margherita von Brentano Center plans to work closely with FemTechNet in the future. They aim to incorporate researchers, lecturers, and students at Freie Universität Berlin in the collaboration. Accordingly, there are plans to organize a Distributed Open Collaborative Course (DOOC) for summer semester 2017. This will bolster our collaboration with universities in the US and Canada while advancing the ongoing process of digitizing Gender Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

Further collaborations will grow out of the exchange with Prof. Ellie Hisama from the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University, Dr. Gayatri Gopinath from the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at New York University, and Dr. Margot Bouman and Dr. Alice Crary from the Department for Gender and Sexuality Studies at the New School.