Panel Discussion on Critical Data Studies
Date: Tuesday April 8th, 3pm-5pm, followed by reception
Location: School of Information Sciences, 614 East Daniel St., Champaign IL, Multipurpose Room 4045 on the 4th floor
This in-person event will be followed by an informal reception with light refreshments.
We welcome you to join us for an in-person panel discussion hosted on Tuesday April 8th 2025 at the School of Information Sciences. Critical data studies takes on one of the most important issues facing society today: how do we build secure, accessible and equitable information infrastructures to support our communities? This event will convene a conversation on the concepts, sites of study, and methods needed to move critical data studies forward. Panelists will discuss how they incorporate methods of critical inquiry in research on computing platforms, scientific data, and the autonomy of people with respect to their data.
This in-person event will be followed by an informal reception with light refreshments.
Panelists:
Amelia Acker, University of Texas at Austin, School of Information
Andrea Thomer, University of Arizona College of Information Science
Kyra Milan Abrams, University of Illinois, Informatics
Moderator and Organizer:
Karen Wickett, University of Illinois, School of Information Sciences
Sponsors:
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Humanities Research Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Panelists and Moderator
Amelia Acker, University of Texas at Austin, School of Information
Amelia Acker is an associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Critical Data Studies Lab. Acker’s research concerns the emergence, standardization, and preservation of information. She studies how data is represented and managed over time by people who maintain archives and information infrastructures. Her research has been sponsored by the US National Science Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Andrea Thomer, University of Arizona College of Information Science
Andrea Thomer is an associate professor at the University of Arizona College of Information Science. Her research interests include the maintenance and evolution of knowledge infrastructures, scientific data curation, and information organization. She is especially interested in long-term database curation, the use and impact of natural history collections, and in the conceptual foundations of data science. Her work has been funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the National Science Foundation, and published in JASIST, CSCW, Slate, and more. Dr. Thomer earned her doctorate at the College of Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign in 2017. Prior to her graduate work, she was an excavator and ad hoc data curator at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California.
Kyra Milan Abrams, University of Illinois, Informatics
Kyra Milan Abrams is an Informatics PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are data privacy and data autonomy. She is specifically interested in how data autonomy can be developed through the perspective of marginalized communities. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies from the University of California-Berkeley.
Karen Wickett, University of Illinois, School of Information Sciences
Karen M. Wickett is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois. Her research is on critical approaches to information organization, metadata, knowledge organization, and data modeling. Wickett is most interested in the analysis of common concepts and data models in information systems. Examining the assumptions and models behind these systems and artifacts can reveal bias and help us understand the role of information systems in societal oppression.