I’m an information systems researcher with a background in software engineering in the humanitarian and commercial sectors. My research focuses on the relationship between information infrastructures, identity categories, and social equity. I am conducting my PhD research at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, where I take a critical, intersectional perspective to investigate how transgender and gender diverse people are affected by identity categories inscribed in dropdown menus, digital technologies, and identity documents, and how this inscription shapes questions of equity in health and welfare programmes. The work is based on ethnographic fieldwork I am conducting in north India with transgender and gender diverse communities.  

My PhD research looks are the broad range of gender diversity in India, and its relationship with the categorization of identity within health and welfare information systems. Since 2014, a range of legal and social policies have been introduced across India to support India’s transgender and gender diverse communities. To identify potential beneficiaries, information systems have been gradually updated, moving from a binary male/female gender category to a ternary male/female/transgender category. Through my work, I look at how this updating of gender categories across information systems has impacted on social equity. I explore the various trajectories of information infrastructuring in the ten year period from 2014 to 2024, how the category is being applied in day-to-day tasks by the policy implementers, and how all of these changes are impacting on the social equity of the transgender and gender diverse people who the social policies seek to emancipate. To understand this, I combine ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative interviews, and documents that recount the changes that took place within this period. 

I take a critical, intersectional perspective on research. I believe that research should be conducted with a view to making a positive change, and that is extremely important when it concerns people’s wellbeing and access to healthcare. Information systems have a lot of influence on who gets access to which treatment, and it’s important that we understand how they shape social equity.

• OpenValid
  • Open-source verification and validation module for MS Access
  • Designed for data-entry in low-resource healthcare settings
  • https://github.com/KatherineWyers/openvalid-msaccess
• Clinicom Instant Messaging Network for Global Health
  • Sustainable Open-source Instant Messaging for Healthcare teams in Developing Countries