I was recently invited to give a book talk for Public Data Cultures at DTU (Technical University of Denmark).

The trip coincided with being on the PhD committee of Johan Irving Søltoft, who successfully defended his dissertation on “computing audiences”. Situated at the intersections of STS, media studies and anthropology, the project explored how critical technical practices may be brought into engaged research performing and probing the construction of film audiences. Many congrats Dr. Søltoft! 🎊✨

I was happy to serve on the committee alongside Brit Ross Winthereik and Carina Ren. The project was co-supervised by Anders Kristian Munk, Anders Koed Madsen and Trine Bille.

After the successful defence and celebration, we had a joint book event for Public Data Cultures and the Handbook of Digital and Computational Research Methods.

Being in Copenhagen brought back memories of meeting there to talk about setting up a Public Data Lab nearly a decade ago - as well as of many moments of gathering and exploring public data practices together. It was also special to have Brit there, given she was there many years ago for early outings of the book - and I remember having some really helpful discussions with her.

After a walkthrough and readings from Public Data Cultures, the handbook’s editors and several authors spoke about their respective parts of the book, including the final section on toolmaking in social and cultural research.

It felt like there were a lot of friends and colleagues visiting Copenhagen that week, including for several events such as the AI and Democracy Summit and the Controversies of AI Society Conference. So as well as catching up with friends and colleagues in Copenhagen, it was a nice surprise to unexpectedly hang out with Noortje Marres, Zizi Papacharissi, Joe Dumit and many others. Joe was just heading off for what sounded like a very interesting workshop with Studio Olafur Eliasson.

Hope to be back in Copenhagen soon!