In this second presentation in our seies, Rikke Hagensby Jensen will argue how we increasingly see datafication in our everyday lives and the design of digital technologies promoted as silver bullet solutions in the transition toward more sustainable futures. Still, underlying problems often remain under-articulated and taken for granted. As a result, the imagination of sustainable futures usually ends up being about what is technically feasible and not about what is problematic in our current practices. In this dialogue, Rikke will draw on Dalton and Thatcher (2014) to engage with her own practice of working with environmental data as a way to study, design and challenge resource-intensive everyday practices. Through the questions proposed by Dalton & Thatcher, Rikke will engage with alternative ways for design to challenge the status quo and the datafication of environmental data. Rikke argues that by foregrounding problems in design-centric research, we gain a complementary perspective that helps us envision and enact meaningful, alternative practices that may be better aligned with sustainable, desirable futures.

Rikke Hagensby Jensen is an Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. Situating her research at the intersection of sustainability and design, she investigates how everyday social practices may shape datafication and design of digital technology in more caring, collective, and sustainable ways.

To prepare for this seminar session, Rikke reccomends reading Dalton & Thatcher's essay. It can be found here: https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/what-does-a-critical-data-studies-look-like-and-why-do-we-care

The seminars are hosted in collaboration with CUPRA Cultures and Practices of Digital Technologies research programme at AU. For any questions or requests, please contact Mariam Khaled (makh@cc.au.dk)