Invitation for PhD Course: Living with Algorithms, 7-9 February, 2024,
Copenhagen, with M. Ruckenstein, H. Ratner and M. H. Bruun
Minna Ruckenstein, Helsinki University, Helene Ratner, Aarhus University and
Maja Hojer Bruun, Aarhus University are teaching the PhD course Living with
Algorithms: Power, Practices, and People in a Datafied World on 7-9 February,
2024, at DPU, Aarhus University in Copenhagen.
Deadline for application: 7 December, 2023.
More about the course: https://phdcourses.dk/Course/108700
Living with Algorithms: Power, Practices, and People in a Datafied World
In this PhD course, we engage with these timely concerns by shifting our
perspective from the systems to the people who (have to) work and live with
them. Using analytic sensibilities from Science & Technology Studies (STS),
anthropology of technology, and Critical Data and Algorithm Studies, we ask:
what happens if we study algorithmic systems through the experiences and
practices of all kinds of people: experts, citizens, developers, consumers and
users. Examining algorithmic systems from the perspective of tech
professionals, for example, allows us to engage with their own conceptions
about issues such as society inequality and future users. Conversely, the
perspective of those who use or are exposed to such systems, including credit
scoring, welfare predictions, health diagnostics, performance measures,
recommender systems, and self-tracking devices, brings us to the realm of
privacy and autonomy and a sense of empowerment or disempowerment. To cope
with such systems, people rely on algorithmic folklore, and workarounds and
resistances, which not only tell of such practices, but of agential
possibilities in the digital environment.
The course will introduce literature that details new forms of organizing,
mediation, contestation, and resistance that algorithmic systems have
generated. This in turn, creates avenues for thinking about policy, design,
and interventions. In the STS spirit of thinking otherwise, we will discuss
concepts, including fear and anticipation, breakages and repair, friction and
weeds, that aid in rethinking power, practices and people in relation to
algorithmic systems and futures.
Once we begin to examine, through ethnography and other interpretive methods,
the different practices that form in relation to datafied and algorithmic
systems, the range of questions and concerns begins to expand. Insights from
the field become important entry points that help us re-imagine established
critiques and their analytic purchase. A key aim of the course is therefore to
provide an overview of analytic possibilities across a range of fields, and to
facilitate a reflexive space for thinking about the normativities,
practicalities, and possibilities entailed in different approaches to
datafication and algorithmic systems.
Please spread this invitation.
Best wishes,
Maja
Maja Hojer Bruun
Associate Professor
Aarhus University
Department of Educational Anthropology
Danish School of Education (DPU)
Nobelparken, building 1483 - 527
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
T: +45 2124 2730
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