We are delighted to host a visit from Professor Nick Couldry (London School of Economics) to the Data Justice Lab on Wednesday 16th of May. Nick will give a talk as part of the JOMEC research seminar series on his forthcoming book on data and colonisation. The talk will take place at 4pm in Bute Building, room 0.05, at Cardiff University. All welcome to join. Further details about the talk below.

This talk will draw on Nick Couldry‘s current book project co-authored with Ulises Mejias (SUNY Oswego): Colonized by Data: The Capitalization of Life Without Limit (Stanford University Press 2019). It will introduce the book’s argument that the contemporary process of datafication is best understood not so much as already a new phase of capitalism, but rather as a new era of colonial appropriation which will pave the way for an eventual new phase of capitalism, just as historic colonialism paved the way eventually for industrial capitalism. The argument draws both on a reading of Marx’s social theory and decolonial theory.

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. As a sociologist of media and culture, he approaches media and communications from the perspective of the symbolic power that has been historically concentrated in media institutions. He is interested in how media and communications institutions and infrastructures contribute to various types of order (social, political, cultural, economic, ethical). His work has drawn on, and contributed to, social, spatial, democratic and cultural theory, anthropology, and media and communications ethics. His analysis of media as ‘practice’ has been widely influential. He is the author or editor of 12 books and many journal articles and book chapters.