Moin, Servus, and Hi!

I am a Professor of Digital Societies at the University of Graz, Austria. My research attends to the increasing importance of digital data in the public sector, education and for ageing populations. Theoretically and conceptually, my research is situated in the areas of critical data studies, new materialism and feminist STS.

Between 2014 and 2022, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen, Germany where I co-founded the university’s Data Science Center. In Bremen and from 2016 to 2019, I led a work package on Participatory Design in Civic Tech and Open Data in the EU-funded project MobileAge. In this action research project, we studied effective methods for co-creating digital public services with and for senior citizens. From 2019 to 2022 I was a Co-PI in DATAFIED, a project funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, which focussed on the way in which the organisation of education is transforming due to its increasing datafication.

I received my PhD from Lancaster University, UK and worked there as research associate at the Centre for the Study of Technology and Organisation (2013/2014). I was a visiting research fellow at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (February/March 2018) and the University of Bristol, UK (April/May and August/September 2022). I hold an MSc in IT, Management and Organisational Change (Lancaster University), an MA in Philosophy and BSc in Informatics (both from the University of Hamburg, Germany). I also serve as an independent expert to the European Commission in the areas eInfrastructures and Digital Science since 2009.

I have co-organised the Data Power Conference twice (2019 in Bremen and 2022 as a hybrid event in Bremen, Sheffield, Ottawa and online). Based on the 2019 conference, I co-edited the open access volume “New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies. The Ambivalences of Data Power” (with Andreas Hepp and Leif Kramp, 2022, Palgrave). The co-edited open access volume “Algorithmic Regimes: Methods, Interactions and Politics” will be published in 2023 (with Bianca Prietl, Simon Egbert, Yana Boeva, Hendrik Heuer and Maike Arnold, Amsterdam University Press). In 2021 I published an open access monograph “Co-creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society” (Springer) which explores how older populations can be engaged in the design and delivery of digital services based on open government data. In addition, I have co-edited two special issues “The Datafication of Education” (with Andreas Breiter, 2019, Learning, Media and Technology) and “Probes as Participatory Design Practice” (with Susanne Maaß, 2018, i-com Journal of Interactive Media). I am currently co-editor of a special issue on ”Designing Postdigital Futures” (with Felicitas Macgilchrist, Heidrun Allert and Teresa Cerratto-Pargman, 2024, Postdigital Science and Education).