“The Critical Data Studies Cluster is an interdisciplinary initiative that welcomes people from across the University and beyond who study datafication and data-driven systems.”
Morgan Currie, Karen Gregory and Alex Taylor, Critical Data Studies Cluster Leads
Critical Data Studies offers a space for scholars who use critique to study data-driven and AI technical systems. Critical approaches interrogate the structures enabling data-driven tech and AI that too often elide their social, legal and political economic dimensions. Critique allows us to imagine – and build – more socially just alternatives.
Meet our researchers
Addie McGowan
Isadora Dullaert
Our external researchers
Workshops & Events
Upcoming events and workshops will be posted here.
Study opportunities in Critical Data Studies
MSc DIGITAL Sociology
Understand and gain the foundation for analysing the complex ways that digital technologies and data shape society, institutions, social relations, and culture. Develop essential social and data science skills to explore topics such as political protest, misinformation, future of work, bias and discrimination, and digital mobility.
MSc Science and Technology in Society
Science and technology are powerful agents of change. But government policies, economies, cultures and values shape the development and direction of scientific research and technological innovation. You will explore and examine the complex and rapidly evolving relationships between science, technology, innovation and society.
MSc Data Science, Technology and Innovation
Develop knowledge and awareness of data intensive applications, and learn to think critically and creatively about governance, ethics and other social issues, and how they interact with technologies. Gain interdisciplinary research skills and data science expertise in both qualitative and quantitative disciplines.
MA/MSc in Design Informatics
Gain the foundation for integrating design thinking and data science with an emphasis on exploring the role of data-driven technologies in society and the potential for social good. You will develop an ethically aware, critically reflective technical practice combining theory and research with making and hacking.
MSC Future Governance
Technology and data are transforming governance across the globe. Explore and analyse the challenges and opportunities that big data brings to the future of democracy. Develop leading-edge knowledge and skills to help shape the world – and your career – by driving positive change.
MSc DATA AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ETHICS
Ethical design, and the use and governance of artificial intelligence and other data-intensive technologies, are critical to our future. Gain the interdisciplinary skills and knowledge to navigate complex systems and roles with transparency, fairness, and respect for individual and human rights, and social needs.
