About Me

A portrait of Cait McKinney wearing a grey button-up shirt, orange wool beanie, holding a boston terrier who is wearing an orange fleece sweater. They are posted in front of a bookshelf, beside a large window.

I’m an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. You can reach me at: cait_mckinney@sfu.ca. I’m non binary and use They/Them pronouns. The picture is me with my terrier Regie Concordia.

I publish my research as books, articles, and essays, and I also have an art practice.

I work broadly in the field of queer media studies, by which I mean: 1) media studies that centres the work of queer people and their visions of justice; and 2) methodological and theoretical approaches to media studies that draw from queer theory. I focus primarily on how queer social movements use digital technologies to share information. I consider how queer information activism helps us rethink issues of accessibility, data-management, and participation in networked media environments. Much of my work is historical and draws on archival research and interviews.

I am also the In Focus editor for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and I serve on the board of Grunt Gallery in Vancouver.

My current projects are focused on:
  • the relationship between HIV and computing in the 1980s and 90s
  • the ways concepts from sexuality have been used to explain data and databases since the 1960s
  • Experimental and speculative approaches to doing queer media history
  • I’m also finishing a short monograph about Pee-wee Herman