Renata Frade, a DigiMedia researcher and PhD Student of the Doctoral Program in Information and Communication on Digital Platforms and researcher, will present her PhD thesis “Storytelling in training, empowerment, and female inclusion in IT: Modeling and prototyping the impact on communities” on September 3, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., in Room 07.1.108 – Carlos Borrego Amphitheater, Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro.

The jury for these examinations can be found at https://www.ua.pt/file/85628

The research was supervised by Professor Mário Vairinhos, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Art at the University of Aveiro, and had financial support from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

Abstract: The primary objective of this research is to develop a technologically mediated communication model that enables the framing of characteristics of Portuguese and Brazilian technological feminist activism (TFA) through communities on digital platforms (DP). The model will connect women’s technology organizations that communicate and interact through digital platforms, transmedia communication strategies with storytelling, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It will be based on analyzing fieldwork surveys of these organizations and case studies involving technology development design.

This research aims to make relevant contributions to the scientific areas of Communication and Information Technologies, Communication Sciences, and Information Science, through the theoretical association of transmedia and storytelling, technological feminism, and HCI. The theoretical application, based on communicational and organizational modeling, in the development of a functional prototype in a community of women in technology, will represent an important social legacy in terms of diversity, inclusion, training, and education.