Researchers and practitioners gathered at the Digital Futures hub on 10 March 2026 for the invitation-only workshop Designing Care, Refusing Harm: Feminist Red and Green Lines for AI in Gendered Health. The half-day event brought together scholars working at the intersection of health, technology, and feminist research to critically examine the role of artificial intelligence in gendered health contexts.
Organized by Digital Futures two Scholars-in-Residence Oliver L. Haimson and Nazanin Andalibi together with Rob Comber, the workshop explored how feminist approaches can inform decisions not only about how AI systems in healthcare should be designed, but also when such systems should not be built at all.
“AI in health is often framed as neutral, but these systems encode assumptions about bodies, care, and responsibility,” said Andalabi. “Feminist perspectives help us ask not only how to build AI differently, but when we should refuse to build it at all.”
The program included a panel discussion with Anna Brynskov, Marianela Ciolfi Felice, Sanna Kuoppamäki, and Amir Hossein Payberah, followed by small-group discussions where participants identified areas where AI systems in health may risk reinforcing gendered and intersectional harms, alongside contexts where feminist values could guide careful exploration.
The workshop concluded with a collective reflection on principles for feminist refusal and responsible design in AI health technologies.
