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 or She/Her pronouns.

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

The picture is me with my terrier Regie Concordia.

What my research is about

I’m interested in how queer social movements use digital technologies to share information. My research illustrates 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.

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