dr. kathryn brewster is a postdoctoral fellow at the university of michigan school of information on the lands of the diverse anishinaabeg people, the odawa, and potawatomi. there, she works with oliver haimson to develop technologies that better serve marginalized people.
kat’s research focuses on how the internet gets remembered and who gets forgotten, with a specific focus on LGBTQ+ internet histories. her current research project looks at the archives and afterlives of computer bulletin board systems by and for LGBTQ+ people and people with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, highlighting the communities they built to make life worth living.
kat currently serves as the co-editor of archival news for the journal for cinema and media studies with kit hughes. (yes, together they are kit and kat.)
in a past life, kat was a videogame and digital culture writer, focusing on the study of videogame/livestreaming cultures, videogame modding communities, and indie game production. over time, her other work has appeared in places like the guardian, VICE, PC gamer, and defector, the arts and videogame publications read only memory and a profound waste of time, the arts festivals now play this in london and feral vector in the yorkshire countryside, video brains in london pubs, the feminist cyber cafe at the showroom gallery, the victoria and albert museum, and the peabody essex museum. kat ran a (pretty well regarded) weekly column about all the weird, wonderful, free games on the internet over at rock, paper, shotgun from 2018 to 2020.
cv and writing samples (including paywalled papers, preprints, and anything else) are available upon request. send an e-mail to hello@kb.place or kbrews@umich.edu.