Contributors
Erik Aarden is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Science, Technology, and Society Studies of the University of Klagenfurt. His research has focused on the distributive implications of the governance of genetic diagnostics in Western Europe, and the social and political dimensions of medical tissue and data collection in the United States, Singapore, and India. Erik has previously held positions at Maastricht University (the Netherlands), RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Harvard University (US) and the University of Vienna (Austria). He currently works on a project on transnational European research infrastructures and their relation to European integration and identity.
Ilia Antenucci is currently completing her PhD at the Institute of Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Her research interests are in the intersections of technologies, government and security. In her PhD research, she investigated the making of ‘smart’ city projects in Cape Town (South Africa) and New Town Kolkata (India). Challenging mainstream narratives of smart cities, she focuses on the ways in which computing infrastructures distribute borders across the urban space and reconfigure security as well as value extraction. At the moment, Ilia is also working with her colleague Andrea Pollio on a book on the making of a digital ecosystem in Cape Town.
Ciara Bracken-Roche is an Assistant Professor of Criminology in the Department of Law at Maynooth University, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. She completed her PhD in the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University. Her current project explores the adoption and use of drone technologies in Canada and Ireland with a specific focus on their application by policing and public safety agencies. Her ongoing research agenda focuses on the relationship between governance and technology, and the social implications of technocratic governance. Her work has been funded by SSHRC in Canada and the IRC in Ireland.
Geoffrey C. Bowker is Chancellor’s Professor and Donald Bren Chair at the School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California at Irvine, where he directs the Evoke Laboratory, which explores new forms of knowledge expression. Recent positions include Professor of and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh iSchool and Executive Director, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara. Together with Leigh Star he wrote Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences; his most recent books are Memory Practices in the Sciences and (with Stefan Timmermans, Adele Clarke and Ellen Balka) the edited collection: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star. He is currently working on big data policy and on scientific cyberinfrastructure; as well as completing a book on social readings of data and databases. He is a founding member of the Council for Big Data, Ethics and Society.
Rachel Douglas-Jones is an Associate Professor of the Anthropology of Data and Infrastructures at the IT University of Copenhagen. She is the Head of the Technologies in Practice research group, and she co-directs the ETHOSLab. In her research she is interested in sites of technological mediation and valuation, and she publishes her work in science and technology studies, anthropological and computer science venues.
Mascha Gugganig is a postdoctoral researcher at the Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University Munich, where she is part of the Innovation, Society & Public Policy research group. Her work looks at epistemological differences and knowledge politics in food, agriculture, and the environment. For many years, she has also been committed to furthering visual, arts-based and multimodal methodologies. She received her PhD in anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and was a visiting fellow in the STS Program at Harvard University. Currently she is a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies.
Nina Klimburg-Witjes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Science & Technology Studies, University of Vienna. In her work at the intersection of science and technology studies and critical security studies, she explores the role of technological innovation and knowledge practices in securitization processes, with a particular focus on sensors and space technologies. Tracing the entanglements between industries, political institutions, and users, Nina is interested in how visions about sociotechnical vulnerabilities are co-produced with security devices and policy, and how novel security technologies interact with issues of privacy and democracy.
Francis Lee is an associate professor of Technology and Social Change at Chalmers University of Technology. He works in the interdisciplinary tradition of science and technology studies. His research focus lies on the politics of information infrastructures and knowledge production. Of particular concern for Francis is how information infrastructures – such as AI, algorithms, or big data – become part of constructing a diversity of objects in society. For example, he is interested in how disease outbreaks are constructed with algorithms, or how risky people are constructed and tracked using different types of information infrastructures.
Evan Light is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Bilingual Communications Program at York University’s Glendon Campus. He studies surveillance and privacy, communication policy and international border spaces. His work has appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals in North America, Latin America and Europe. Evan’s Snowden Archive-in-a-Box, an offline archive of the Edward Snowden documents, has been exhibited in Canada, Germany, Serbia and Italy.
Katja Mayer was trained as sociologist and works at the intersection of science-technology-society. Her research focuses on the powers of social scientific methods. Currently she is immersing herself in data practices in computational social science and data science. Katja is an advocate of open access to scientific knowledge production and open policies for science and technology. Until the end of 2018 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University in Munich. Currently she is a senior researcher at the Centre for Social Innovation in Vienna working on science policy issues. Furthermore, Katja is Elise Richter Fellow at the University of Vienna, Department of Science and Technology Studies.
Fenwick McKelvey is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. He studies the digital politics and policy. He is the author of Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) winner of the 2019 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Award and co-author of The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (Peter Lang, 2012) with Greg Elmer and Ganaele Langlois.
Jan-Hendrik Passoth is Professor for Sociology of Technology and Head of the Science and Technology Studies Group at the European New School of Digital Studies of the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt / Oder. He explores the ongoing digital transformation of our lives, working environments and institutions; focusing on the entanglements between infrastructures, datafication and communication. He writes about the social and cultural role of software, data and algorithms and works in close collaboration with projects in computer science, mathematics and software engineering.
Annalisa Pelizza is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Bologna. Before, she was Associate Professor at the Science, Technology and Policy Studies department of the University of Twente, where she is now Visiting Professor. Annalisa studies how information systems entail broader but unnoticed transformations in the modern order of authority, buried in technical minutiae. Her work adopts tools proper to science and technology studies to investigate data infrastructures and security in international relations. She has been the recipient of several European Commission scientific grants and currently leads the ‘Processing Citizenship’ (http://processingcitizenship.eu) research group, funded by the European Research Council.
Nikolaus Poechhacker is a researcher at the Institute for Public Law and Political Science, University of Graz. Before his academic life, he worked as an IT professional. In his research, he is studying the relationship between democratic institutions, social order, and algorithmic systems in various domains, bringing together perspectives from media theory, science and technology studies, computer science, and sociology. Most recently, he is exploring the impact of algorithmic procedures and digital legal technologies on the legal system.
El Iblis Shah, chair of the ‘Conference on Informational Violence’ at Aden Academy of Science, researches the politics of machine networks and coded symbolic representations. His interest in the crypto-speleological realms of media and his liminal research on control technologies focuses on human sacrifice and encoded belief. In a foundational text on algorithmic regimes, Cannibalistic Capitalism and Alien Algorithms, El Iblis Shah analysed the rule of terror through invisible formulas and the infectious power of logic spells. For many years, the elusive author of The Book of Half-Truths predicted the return of the repressed in haunted digital futures.
Lucy Suchman is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology of Science and Technology at Lancaster University. Her work at the intersections of anthropology and feminist science and technology studies engages cultural imaginaries and material practices of technology design, with a focus on demilitarisation and social justice.
A.R.E Taylor is an anthropologist based at the University of Cambridge. He works at the intersection of digital anthropology, media archaeology and the history of technology. His research concentrates on imaginaries of digital collapse and on the material and temporal dimensions of data storage and security. He is an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Extreme Anthropology and a founder of the Cambridge Infrastructure Resilience Group (CIRG), a network of researchers exploring critical infrastructure protection in relation to global catastrophic risks. He is also a founding member of the Social Studies of Outer Space (SSOS) Research Network. His research interests include: data futures, digital preservation, outer-space, techno-apocalyptic narratives and pre-digital nostalgia.
Martin Tironi is Associate Professor, School of Design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He holds a PhD from Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI), École des Mines de Paris, where he also did post-doctorate studies. He received his Master degree in Sociology at the Université Paris Sorbonne V and his BA in Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He was Visiting Fellow (2018) at the Centre for Invention and Social Process (CISP), Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). He is currently involved in a 3-year research project (FONDECYT) which focuses on the processes de datafication of individuals and urban spaces.
Matías Valderrama is a sociologist with a Master in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His main areas of interest include digital culture, science and technology studies, digital methods, social network analysis and surveillance studies. He is currently working as a researcher at the School of Design of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, conducting research projects on digital technologies and datafication in Chile.
Godert Jan Van Mannen built his first computer at the age of 12. Five years later, he was hired by the Dutch Ministry of Defense as a security consultant. Godert Jan has worked for several Dutch intelligence agencies and co-founded a cyber security company, which became one of the biggest private IT-Security companies in the Netherlands. Amongst his clients are the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV), national internet service providers, mayor investments banks, and several Dutch ministries.
Wouter Van Rossem is a PhD candidate in the Department of Science, Technology, and Policy Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He studied computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and worked for several years as a software engineer in different organizations. His current PhD research is part of the European Research Council funded project Processing Citizenship. He also takes part in the Dutch Graduate School Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC).
Julia Velkova is an assistant professor in Technology and Social Change at the Department of Thematic Studies (TEMA-T) at Linköping University. With a background in media and communication studies, her work lies at the intersection of media studies, science and technology studies and cultural studies of digital media. Her current research is focused on the politics and temporalities of media infrastructures, digital excess and ruination and the intersection of the data economy with energy politics.
Jutta Weber is a science and technology studies scholar, philosopher of technology and professor for media studies at the University of Paderborn. Her research focuses on computational technoscience culture(s) asking how and for whom the non/human actors work. She has been visiting professor at several universities including Uppsala (Sweden), Vienna (Austria) and Twente (the Netherlands). Recent publications include: Technosecurity Cultures. Special Issue of ‘Science As Culture’ (with Katrin Kämpf, March 2020); Tracking and Targeting: Sociotechnologies of (In)security. Special Issue of ‘Science, Technology & Human Values’ 42:6, 2017 (with Karolina Follis und Lucy Suchman) For more see www.juttaweber.eu
Chris Wood is an artist interested in the effects of technology on space, time and ontology. Recent work involves tarot readings based on the position of GPS satellites and an AI algorithm trained to speak in tongues. A parallel career in radio production influences his work, with the majority of his projects realized through sound. He holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London and has exhibited internationally. For examples of work, visit http://chriswood.art