Conference Agenda

Data has become a dominant lens through which planetary crises are perceived and addressed. Yet the infrastructures through which data comes to matter, including platforms, states, and industries, are primarily shaped by logics of efficiency, optimisation, and extractive governance. Within these regimes, data is often treated as neutral and given, obscuring the choices and configurations through which phenomena and ecosystems are represented. As a result, dominant data practices tend to reproduce anthropocentric, extractive, and colonial dynamics, foreclosing the epistemic and political possibilities offered by plural ways of knowing and being that are urgently needed to respond to planetary crises (Briggs et al., 2025; Dunbar & Speed, 2024; Gabrys et al., 2025; Giaccardi et al., 2025; Tironi & Albornoz, 2025). 

This Exploration invites participants to reimagine, and potentially trouble, the very notion of data itself. Rather than assuming data as a stable or given entity, the Exploration asks how data comes into being through situated relations, practices, and agencies. It seeks to collectively articulate which questions need to be asked, and which directions explored, when what counts as data is co-produced across human, nonhuman, and computational agencies. In doing so, it foregrounds the frictions, trade-offs, and axes of negotiation that emerge when attempting to connect MTH frameworks with the practical realities of technological design and governance.