Fanzine creation and other forms of feminist DIY cultures are deeply intertwined with networks of friendship, particularly in the context of online and digital spaces. In the internet age, zines—once physical artifacts exchanged within tight-knit, local communities—have expanded into digital platforms, circulating across global networks of friendship and solidarity. Online forums, social media, and virtual meetups blur the boundaries between readers and creators, with zine-making practices often serving as an intimate and collaborative space for feminist expression.
However, this interconnectedness between friendship and zine production doesn't diminish the radical potential of these works. On the contrary, it highlights the importance of grassroots methodologies that resist the commodification of knowledge and creativity. This session, focused on digital and analog zine-making, offers a valuable opportunity to explore how friendship—both online and offline—can serve as a critical antidote to the pressures of neoliberalism within the academy in 2025. By examining the intersections of friendship, digital networks, and feminist DIY practices, we interrogate how these alternative, collaborative forms of knowledge-making push back against the isolating and individualizing forces that dominate contemporary academic and digital spaces.
Tillman-Healy (2015) argues the merit of using ‘friendship’ as a method of qualitative inquiry which involves researching with ‘the practices, at the pace, in the natural contexts, and with an ethic of friendship.’ In this workshop we extend the conversation started by Tillman-Healy to examine the myriad of ways that an ethical approach to research looks alot like a good friendship as a move away from the extractive neo-liberal push to view academia as a zero-sum competition to be won.
Some questions we will explore in this workshop include: what would it look like to approach all of our research relationships - with collaborators, students and supervisors, participants - with the same types of generosity, mutual respect and trust that we give to our friends? Furthermore, what does approaching our digital research through a lens of relationality call into focus or refocus? For example, what new forms of research emerge when we expand the definition of friend to include the natural world, digital infrastructures, or non-human living things? How can we be “good friends" to future generations? Can we move from questions aimed at objectively analyzing anonymous groups of ‘them’ to subjective explorations of “us”? Participants will engage with these themes through a series of playful activity stations. For example: advice on negotiating equal pay and funding presented as a series of ‘dear abby’ advice columns, a “what’s my academic online persona” magazine quiz, or a reimagining of a conference as a gaming party.
We take a generative, reflexive, and expansive approach in this workshop, and seek to co-create this session and the resulting zine alongside our participants. Equal parts witty pastiche and earnest feminist manifesto, this zine making workshop serves as a radical call for us to reckon with the existing role relationships play in all aspects of the research process and encourages us to reconsider what kinship can and should look like within the academy.
