Alvarez Dixon is an informatics PhD student at the University of Illinois iSchool. His research interests orbit social and cultural configurations of technology practice. Issues of interest include deconstructing coloniality in digital spaces, African diasporic technocultural practices, as well as digitality and innovation at the periphery of networked societies. Dixon’s approach is multidisciplinary, pulling from social informatics, critical ethnic studies, and twenty years of professional practice in urban youth development. His current and recent projects include designing spaces and pedagogical frames for engaging participants in community informatics, makerspaces, and digital humanities. Dixon’s work with the Community Data Clinic involved a designing and implementing pedagogical tools in collaboration with the Nobel Project to introduce participants to digital archives and build research and technology practice skills through the development of digital oral history exhibits which involved ethnographic inquiry and digital literacy skills development.