‘Decolonizing’ Digital Data

‘Decolonizing’ Digital Data

Join us for the 'Decolonising' Digital Data symposium on October 9th. In this one-day event, we will explore how to critically examine and reimagine prevailing digital practices and infrastructures through a decolonial lens. We will bring together scholars and practitioners who work at the intersection of digital research, critical epistemologies, and data justice.

Rethinking Knowledge in the Age of Digital Data

Digital data are everywhere in 21st-century societies, serving diverse purposes: enabling profit-making for companies, governance for states, and model-building for researchers. However, over the last decade, numerous thinkers have raised significant concerns about the negative aspects of digital data. They are concerned about how large technology companies collect and control data in ways that can exploit individuals, and how governments utilise this data for mass surveillance and control of citizens. Many experts believe that the established ways we think about knowledge may not be sufficient to understand digital data, and that conventional understandings reproduce prevailing epistemic injustices in society.

Exploring Digital Injustices and Advocating for Equitable Knowledge

Advocacy groups share concerns about digital access. They point out that it can increase inequalities, threaten privacy, and support harmful practices. Some advocate for stricter rules, while others oppose digital dominance altogether, choosing to engage in hacktivism or neo-Luddite activism. These critiques challenge current data practices and align with a broader goal of decolonising knowledge. This effort focuses on giving a voice to marginalised groups, addressing injustices in knowledge, and promoting alternative ways of understanding and acting. This symposium will explore these ideas by bringing together experts from both academic and non-academic fields who are working on digital research and critique.

Keynote speakers

Prof. Dr. Tamar Sharon

Prof. Dr. Tamar Sharon is co-director of iHub at Radboud University, researching how digitalization affects public values. She specializes in philosophy and ethics of technology, STS, and critical data studies. Her work includes topics like Big Tech in health, self-tracking, and digital sphere transgressions. She previously worked at Maastricht University and King’s College London.

Danny Lämmerhirt

Danny Lämmerhirt (MA) leads the Future Internet Lab at Waag Futurelab. His work explores how digital technologies and data can support democratic experiments and address societal issues. He develops methods for public engagement with internet technologies—designing, using, governing, and challenging them—to foster dialogue and collaboration around matters of public concern.

Dr. Koen Leurs

Dr. Koen Leurs is an associate professor in Gender, Media and Migration Studies, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He is interested in migration, digital technologies and creative methodologies: his most recent books are Digital Migration (Sage, 2023) and Doing Digital Migration Studies (2024).

Programme

• 09:30-10:00 Room open
• 10:00-10:10 Welcome by organisers
• 10:10-10:20 Opening by Jochem Tolsma
• 10:20-11:00 Keynote address 1 Tamar Sharon: The moral limits of digitalization: A sphere-centric theory of justice for the digital transition
• 11:00-11:40 Keynote address 2 Koen Leurs: Decentering and pluralizing migration and digital data research
• 11:40-12:00 Q&A/discussion
• 12:00-13:00 Lunch break
• 13:00-14:30 (parallel)
  Session 1. Grassroots perspectives (panel)Session 2. Data institutions (round table)
• 14:30-14:50 Tea break
• 14:50-15:30 Session 3. Alternatives
• 15:30-16:00 Keynote address 3 Danny Lämmerhirt: How to make the stack public: Field notes on infrastructural participation and value-sensitive design
• 16:00-16:30 Reports from panels & concluding remarks
• 16:30-17:30 Drinks

Partners

Utrecht University, Waag Futurelab

This event is organised by the Radboud Sectorplans 'Societal Inequality & Diversity', 'Human Factor in New Technologies', the cross-cutting SSH theme 'Prosperity, Participation and Citizenship in a Digital World', and RUNOMI. For more info, please contact Joost Beuving.