Opening Keynote
Miriah Meyer is a professor in the Department of Science & Technology at Linköping University, supported through the WASP program. Her research centers on creating visualization tools that support exploratory and reflective data analysis, as well as bring new ideas for how we can use data in our lives. These tools allow people to learn about their data, reframe their perspectives, and disrupt their thinking. She obtained her bachelors degree in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at LiU she was an associate professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah and a member of the Vis Design Lab in the Scientific Computing & Imaging Institute.
Data As _______: Exploring the Plurality of Data in Visualization
What is data? Is it just numbers, or characters, or symbols, or is it also their meaning? Who or what creates data, and how does data get made? What gets to count as data, and what does not?
These questions have no right and wrong answers. But asking them provides a foundation for rethinking the role of visualizations — and data — in research and scholarship. In this talk I’ll propose four different framings of data that reflect the breadth of perspectives that visualization researchers employ. Articulating these framings as different from one another opens up new possibilities for how we make and use data and visualizations, as well as challenge our normative accounts of data-driven work.
24/02/2026 at 06:00 p.m.
Closing Keynote
Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda has been Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria since 2021. Prior to this, she was team leader for ‘Data Linking & Data Security’ at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne from 2016 to 2021. Her academic training includes studies in cultural anthropology, computer science and history at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, as well as a doctorate from Lancaster University on the topic of ‘Ubiquitous Computing in Industrial Workplaces’. She works across disciplines in digital humanities, science and technology studies, sociology of technology, and internet research, and her research interests include new epistemologies for big data, algorithms in everyday life, data practices, social casual games, and (fair) artificial intelligence.
Digital Humanities Unpacked: The Politics and Practices of Data Work
Currently, Digital Humanities are increasingly focusing on the sustainable preservation of the methods, algorithms, and data transformations that make new insights possible in the first place. While the generation of data remains a central concern, it also serves as the starting point and foundation for contemporary research projects. This situation presents an opportunity for reflection on how data are embedded in broader scientific, technical, and cultural contexts: How were the data created, who was involved in their formation, and what power relations are reflected in their production, circulation, and use? How do we preserve these contexts of data creation, and how do we account for them in our analyses? Building on ethnographic research into working with data, the keynote addresses questions of data work and data politics. Digital methods are understood not only as epistemological but also as social and political practices. Using empirical examples – from working with digital data in research to algorithmic decision-making processes – it will be shown how data work is always also a form of negotiating knowledge, authority, and responsibility. It becomes clear that digital data are never neutral but are embedded in complex power structures and shaped by specific actors, infrastructures, and norms. The keynote invites us to understand Digital Humanities as a critical discipline that not only applies digital methods but also reflects on their societal implications. How can we, as researchers in Digital Humanities, make the politics of data visible? The talk connects theory, method, and practice, and encourages dialogue about the future of digital knowledge production.