As data are increasingly mobilized in the service of governments and corporations, their unequal conditions of production, asymmetrical methods of application, and unequal effects on both individuals and groups have become increasingly difficult for data scientists—and others who rely on data in their work—to ignore. But it is precisely this power that makes it worth asking: “Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science, with whose interests in mind?”

Join Batten School professor Michele Claibourn for a conversation on "Data Feminism" with Lauren Klein, associate professor of English and quantitative theory and methods at Emory University. Klein directs the Digital Humanities Lab and is the author of An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and, with Catherine D’Ignazio, Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020). With Matthew K. Gold, she edits Debates in the Digital Humanities, a hybrid print-digital publication stream that explores debates in the field as they emerge.

This conversation will be moderated by Caitlin Wylie, assistant professor of science, technology, and society at UVA's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. It is the first event in the "Bringing Ethics to the Conversation" series hosted by the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science and UVA's School of Data Science.