Critical Data Studies Meets Data Governance

The UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research and the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics are pleased to co-sponsor a lecture by Dr. Tracey Lauriault, Associate Professor of Critical Media and Big Data at Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication. The lecture will be in-person and virtual attendance is supported.

The lecture will introduce the field of critical data studies (CDS) and will argue that data governance as a practice ought to be informed by CDS theoretical approaches such as social and technological assemblages, dynamic nominalism and technological citizenship. The lecture will provide illustrative examples from ongoing research in Open Smart Cities, Digital Twins, archives and Indigenous data governance. The question-and-answer session following the lecture will be an opportunity to bridge lecture topics with the work and issues encountered at CHSPR and at the Centre for Applied Ethics.

Dr Lauriault is a critical data studies scholar who works on open data, big data, open smart cities, open government, data sovereignty, data preservation and data governance. Her ongoing research includes disaggregated equity data, digital twins, intersectional approaches to data governance, data invisibilities and the history of the census. As a publicly engaged scholar, she mobilizes her research into data and technology policy in all sectors. As a data and technological citizen, she examines large and small complex systems with the hope of making them more just, inclusive, equitable and environmentally sustainable.