Data Care and Its Politics in Scientific Data Management: Designing for Research Infrastructure in Ecology

Description

In this presentation we push care into the digital world of bits, bytes and infrastructures: we think with Puig de la Bellacasa’s ‘matters of care’ about how to support data care and its politics. We use the notion to reflect on participatory research and design activities in a number of our empirical studies of local collective data management in ecological research. We attend to care as a material and political ‘doing and intervening’ recognizing and embracing its potential as ‘transformative ethos’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011). We ask “How to design for data care?” and “How to account for the politics of data care in design?” Articulation of data care together with ethically and politically significant data issues in design, reveals in these cases the invisible labors of care by local data advocates and a ‘partnering designer’. With digital data work in the sciences increasing and data infrastructures for research under development at a variety of large scales, the local level is often considered merely a recipient of services rather than an active participant in design of data practices and infrastructures. We identify local collective data management as a ‘neglected thing’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) in research infrastructure planning and speculate on how things could be different in the data landscape.

Period	13 Jun 2019 → 14 Jun 2019
Event title	Nordic Science and Technology Studies Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Tampere, Finland
Degree of Recognition	International