Inaugural Professor Lecture: Silvia Masiero

In this inaugural lecture, Professor Silvia Masiero will revisit the past and recent history of ICT for Development (ICT4D) research in the light of the question, can the data subaltern speak?, which reads Spivak’s (1988) notion of subalternity in the light of present-day datafication practices. Inspired by concepts from subaltern theory and data justice, she will introduce the notion of data subalternity as a condition of systemic silencing produced, enacted and maintained through the means of data. Drawing on her qualitative work of 15 years, from the datafication of users in India’s food security system to her present-day research on digital ID exclusion in Norway, she will position data subalternity as a fundamental device in present-day ICT4D work, which illuminates a systemic condition of devoicing and its consequences across development programmes. In conceptualising the data subaltern and the extent to which they have voice, she leverages data subalternity as a route to better understand the conditions for resistance, as well as routes through which solidarity efforts can develop to reimagine otherwise exclusive, and potentially harmful, architectures of social assistance.