Erin E. Hipple, MSW, MA, LCSW, PhD is a social work educator, scholar, therapist, politicized grief tender, song carrier, therapeutic game master, and enthusiastic inhabitant of the places where disciplines get a little unruly. Their work wanders among politicized somatics, disability justice, relational pedagogy, care labor, grief, ecojustice, tabletop role-playing games, and the question of how people shaped by extractive institutions might collectively practice becoming otherwise. Erin is especially interested in story-worlds, collective imagination, and the radical possibilities of asking better questions before reaching for tidier answers. When not teaching, writing, facilitating, or gently complicating things, they can often be found paying attention to plants, other-than-human (and human) animals, singing to rivers, rescuing tadpoles from evaporating puddles, and the pondering the occasional fictional villain who probably deserved a more contextual assessment.

To those who want the tl;dr…

We are going to use gay space rocks to talk about the political organization of care.

For those who want more…

What can a child with a magical belly button, several thousand years of unresolved intergalactic family conflict, and a lot of feelings teach us about care? Quite a bit, actually. Using Steven Universe as a shared story-world, this interactive keynote explores what happens when care becomes a role, an expectation, or an extractable resource…and what it might mean to practice care otherwise.

Together, we will consider care as refusal, reciprocity amid fluctuating capacity, gentle accountability without shame, and relational practices that make room for boundaries, repair, and collective responsibility. No fandom homework required. Through chat storms and TTRPG-inspired collective worldbuilding, participants will imagine and rehearse more just, sustainable, and celebrate (rather than dread) the cosmic chaos of collective care.