Track B: Problematizing ‘Data Governance’

Data governance can be described as the loosely demarcated field where researchers discuss questions about how best to govern and regulate data-related processes, practices, and policies. This track draws from TILT’s recent work on data governance to examine different ways in which models for data governance are emerging globally. In this track we explore debates including how ‘data’ is often seen  as a regulatory object. In other domains it is seen as a resource to be taken back out of the hands of commercial parties. Recently, scholars have pointed to the limitation of seeing data merely as a commodity and not an entity that has the capacity to influence and shape social life. 

This track invites welcomes contributions on the following themes: 

• The usability and functionality of treating data as a regulatory object. 
• The infrastructural turn in data governance and the creation of dependencies on Big-Tech. 
• Models for data governance to regulate community data; e.g. data commons, data cooperatives, Indigenous data sovereignty, data trusts.
• The relationships between data governance models and the collectives and communities to which they pertain.
• Empirically-informed research on sustainable community-based data governance.
• Data governance, data nationalism and national security (Comparatives perspectives are especially welcome). 
• Brussels effects, data governance and eurocentrism: Problematizing the EU as a Global Regulator.  
• How can we make data governance about challenging data power? Or: (data) governance versus regulation.
• ​​​Data governance, Big-Tech and privatization of public regulation.  

Deadline for submitting extended abstracts and proposals for panels/interactive workshops via the EasyChair conference system : January 31, 2024

For questions about possible presentations for this track, please contact Dr. Gijs van Maanen: g.vanmaanen@tilburguniversity.edu