Fieldwork at UC Berkeley
In the framework of the NEST project (Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE Action Programme) I will be visiting fellow at UC Berkeley from august to October 2022. This stay will be dedicated to my fieldwork on media labs.
NEST (grant agreement ID: 101007915) is an intercontinental and intersectoral project that links academic research with social and artistic practices to carry out theoretical inquiry on the relationship between digital technologies, living systems and the production of knowledge within territorialized laboratories forming networks of localities. The project is based on contributory research: a method combining traditional academic, artistic, technological and industrial approaches with urban/rural research practices in order to constitute territorial communities integrating different forms of knowledge (practical and theoretical). The heart of the project is a mobility program for an international exchange of researchers and staff across academic and non-academic sectors of NEST actors, which allows the articulation of local territorial situations with planetary concerns in the context of the Anthropocene.
Research abstract
Web-based data are often considered as traces of social action available in real time and capable to provide answers to questions of governance and research also in real time, or at least faster than classical academic times. Considering the explosion of public and private tenders for studies based on these data and the opening of “labs” (media labs, digital humanities labs, society labs, etc.) capable of quickly responding to this demand, this secondment aims to study the structure of this type in Berkeley. My research will develop a critical reflection on action-research based on web data in social sciences. The secondment will be also the occasion to share knowledge on this topic and compare the practices of Berkeley with other labs around the world.
This secondment is part of a long-term ethnographical fieldwork aiming to study this type of structure by focusing on several aspects: the research workflow (relationship between theory-data-tools), the organisation of physical space, the organisation of team, the ethical framework and the relationship with private and public stakeholders.
The UC Berkeley will focus mainly on the following structures: