Public Data Cultures
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Speaker
Dr Jonathan W. Y. Gray
Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Culture and Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
Jonathan W. Y. Gray (@jwyg) explores the roles digital data, methods and infrastructures in shaping how we know and live together. He is the author of Public Data Cultures (Polity, 2025). At King's College London, he is Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities and co-director of the Centre for Digital Culture. He is also co-founder of the Public Data Lab; research associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris); and has taught with the School for Poetic Computation in NYC. More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org.
Abstract
Join us for a book talk on Public Data Cultures (Polity, 2025), which nurtures critical and creative engagements with data.
Public data shapes what we know and how we live together. It is often digital, freely available and related to matters of shared concern, from global warming graphs to collaborative spreadsheets documenting mass layoffs. It circulates via maps and apps which enable us to discover, report and rate what is around us.
Public Data Cultures explores the practices and cultures of how data is made public in the age of the Internet. Looking beyond familiar narratives of data as a resource to be liberated or protected, this book offers new perspectives on public data as networked cultural material, as medium of participation and as site of transnational politics. To better account for how data makes a difference, the book argues for a more expansive conception of what is involved in making data public. In doing so, it focuses not just on removing restrictions but also on caring for arrangements involved in making data public in ways that grow shared understanding and solidarity in responding to the many intersecting troubles of our times.
