News & Events

29th November, 2024 - Mette N. Svendsen talks on Near human: an ethnography of how research on piglets contributes to human reproduction

2nd - 6th June, 2025 - Workshop - Theorising through the mundane: storying transformations in healthcare

Welcoming Sylvain Besençon to the Team

In Spring 2024, Sylvain has joined the team and will begin work on a new subproject, "(Im)possibilities of killing data: towards an ethnography of digital identity survival beyond biological death." This project explores the persistence of personal digital data after death, questioning what happens to our digital footprints once we pass away. In a world where nearly every aspect of our lives generates digital data, Sylvain will investigate the emergence of new practices regarding the management of posthumous digital identities. The research differentiates between passive and active data persistence and their respective consequences. Passive persistence refers to data that remain due to the difficulty or impossibility of deletion, such as online accounts or emails sent by the deceased, which continue to exist in the inboxes of others. Conversely, some data are actively maintained as digital memorials, with social media profiles often updated by families and friends to honor the deceased. As the Internet increasingly becomes a vast archive of photos, videos, and other digital memories, this project delves into the social and ethical implications of this complex infrastructural landscape. It examines how the Internet serves both as a neglected cemetery and as a memorial space for our digital phantoms.

19th April, 2024 - Klaus Hoeyer talks on Data-intensive medicine: is there a role for social analysis?

16th February, 2024 - Francis Lee talks on Ontological overflows and the politics of absence

17th February, 2023 - Stine Adrian talks on Leaking milk, and falling hair: Embodid experiences and technological remaking's of becoming a mother to a dead child

23rd November, 2022 - Sonja Jerak-Zuiderant talks on Making con-tact, Doing difference: An inquiry into listening for difference, touching storytelling, and metaphysical commitments in (spiritual) care and scientific practices