News of Heike Jensen’s death from cancer, on 3 February 2014, reached internet governance academic and civil society networks a year later. As Marianne Franklin, friend and colleague from GigaNet, puts it: “The networks and the hands-on work in which Heike engaged are cross-border, cross-sector and interdisciplinary by nature and predilection. This is why news of her death has been a ripple of both physical and virtual proportions.”



We couldn’t agree more with Franklin when she says, “All the networks, and the people who knew Heike, who worked with her are poorer for losing her, so young.” This GenderIT.org edition is in tribute to this amazing woman who contributed to our ability to question, interrogate and rebuild the institutions and architecture of the internet in more equitable ways. In the words of Sonia Randhawa, we hope that through this edition, readers will be driven not only to investigate Heike’s work more deeply, but also to engage in the deeper project of imagining, sharing and building an internet and a broader future without the shackles of patriarchy.



Image by Julie Davis used under Creative Commons license.

Whose internet is it indeed! Internet governance feminism as political praxis

marianne franklin
These reflections follow on from a personal recollection of Heike Jensen on the Global Internet Governance Academic Network blog. Here, Marianne Franklin focuses on one of Heike's later publications, a chapter for the 2013 edition of the Global Information Society Watch entitled “Whose internet is it anyway? Shaping the internet – feminist voices in governance decision making”.

A legacy on how gender is built into the way we discuss and use technology

sonia
In this article, GenderIT.org talks with Anita Gurumurthy from IT For Change about gender and privacy. Anita worked with Heike in the Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society research programme.
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