Critical Data Studies, Edinburgh

Description

Critical Data Studies is one of the eight research clusters of the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh, and held its inaugural event in March 2024. It studies the political and social dimensions of data-driven and artificial intelligence technologies, offering a space for scholars who use critique to examine how such technical systems work. Its stated argument is that the structures enabling these systems too often obscure their social, legal and political-economic dimensions, and it treats critique as a route to imagining and building more socially just alternatives. Its members are drawn from across the University, the largest group in social and political science, alongside informatics, law, design informatics and education.

The cluster runs its own seminar series and occasional talks, on subjects including platform recommendation systems and platform culture, influencer labour in the creative industries, datafied publics and civil society, biometric data traces and border control, disinformation and media manipulation, and data and municipal accountability. It feeds several of the University's masters programmes, among them digital sociology, science and technology in society, design informatics, future governance, and data and artificial intelligence ethics.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2024

Contact details

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University affiliation(s)

University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh