Lindsay Poirier

Lindsay Poirier

Cultural anthropologist of data cultures; Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Sciences at Smith College

Posts by Collection

portfolio

publications

Pushback: Critical Data Designers and Pollution Politics

Kim Fortun, Lindsay Poirier, Alli Morgan, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, Mike Fortun. 2016. "Pushback: Critical Data Designers and Pollution Politics." Big Data & Society 3(2), 2053951716668903. SAGE Publications Ltd.

In this paper, we describe how critical data designers have created projects that 'push back' against the eclipse of environmental problems by dominant orders: the pioneering pollution database Scorecard, released by the US NGO Environmental Defense Fund in 1997; the US Environmental Protection Agen… Read more

Devious Design: Digital Infrastructure Challenges for Experimental Ethnography

Lindsay Poirier. 2017. "Devious Design: Digital Infrastructure Challenges for Experimental Ethnography." Design Issues 33(2), 70--83.

Diverse disciplinary communities approach design with diverse design logics design directives informed by critical theoretical commitments that are to be translated into material form. Recounting the design of a digital humanities platform, this paper shows how design logics of existing digital infr… Read more

Mapping Organized Ignorance in Environmental Health

Laura Rabinow, Lindsay Poirier. 2017. "Mapping Organized Ignorance in Environmental Health." XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students 23(3), 16--19.

How data collection and reporting standards have shaped what we know and do not know about water contamination in Hoosick Falls, NY…. Read more

A Turn for the Scruffy: An Ethnographic Study of Semantic Web Architecture

Lindsay Poirier. 2017. "A Turn for the Scruffy: An Ethnographic Study of Semantic Web Architecture." In WebSci '17. ACM.

This paper examines how legacies of thinking about ontology, logic, and how best to approach knowledge representation have become interwoven in the architecture of the technologies that enable a Semantic Web. As a cultural anthropologist, I approach this study with qualitative historical and ethnogr… Read more

Classification as Catachresis: Double Binds of Representing Difference with Semiotic Infrastructure

Lindsay Poirier. 2019. "Classification as Catachresis: Double Binds of Representing Difference with Semiotic Infrastructure." Canadian Journal of Communication 44(3).

Background This article explores the results of a three-year ethnographic study of how semiotic infrastructures- or digital standards and frameworks such as taxonomies, schemas, and ontologies that encode the meaning of data- are designed. Analysis It examines debates over best practices in semiot… Read more

Data Sharing at Scale: A Heuristic for Affirming Data Cultures

Lindsay Poirier, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn. 2019. "Data Sharing at Scale: A Heuristic for Affirming Data Cultures." Data Science Journal 18(1), 48.

Addressing the most pressing contemporary social, environmental, and technological challenges will require integrating insights and sharing data across disciplines, geographies, and cultures. Strengthening international data sharing networks will not only demand advancing technical, legal, and logis… Read more

Ethnographies of Datasets: Teaching Critical Data Analysis through R Notebooks

Lindsay Poirier. 2020. "Ethnographies of Datasets: Teaching Critical Data Analysis through R Notebooks." The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy(18).

With the growth of data science in industry, academic research, and government planning over the past decade, there is an increasing need to equip students with skills not only in responsibly analyzing data, but also in investigating the cultural contexts from which the values reported in data emerg… Read more

Data(-)Based Ambivalence Regarding NYC 311 Data Infrastructure

Lindsay Poirier. 2021. "Data(-)Based Ambivalence Regarding NYC 311 Data Infrastructure." Cultural Studies 0(0), 1--28. Routledge.

In New York City, data documenting complaints made to 311 - the city's municipal 'customer service' agency - are increasingly being analyzed by city agencies, politicians, activists, and residents to make sense of urban quality of life. This article examines the infrastructural and socio-cultural co… Read more

Moving Ethnography: Infrastructuring Doubletakes and Switchbacks in Experimental Collaborative Methods

Aalok Khandekar, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, Lindsay Poirier, Alli Morgan, Alison Kenner, Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, The Team. 2021. "Moving Ethnography: Infrastructuring Doubletakes and Switchbacks in Experimental Collaborative Methods." Science & Technology Studies 34(3).

In this article, we describe how our work at a particular nexus of STS, ethnography, and critical theory- informed by experimental sensibilities in both the arts and sciences- transformed as we built and learned to use collaborative workflows and supporting digital infrastructure. Responding to the … Read more

Reading Datasets: Strategies for Interpreting the Politics of Data Signification

Lindsay Poirier. 2021. "Reading Datasets: Strategies for Interpreting the Politics of Data Signification." Big Data & Society 8(2), 20539517211029322. SAGE Publications Ltd.

All datasets emerge from and are enmeshed in power-laden semiotic systems. While emerging data ethics curriculum is supporting data science students in identifying data biases and their consequences, critical attention to the cultural histories and vested interests animating data semantics is needed… Read more

Data, Knowledge Practices, and Naturecultural Worlds: Vehicle Emissions in the Anthropocene

Lindsay Poirier. 2022. "Data, Knowledge Practices, and Naturecultural Worlds: Vehicle Emissions in the Anthropocene." In The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology, edited by Maja Bruun, Ayo Wahlberg, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Cathrine Hasse, Klaus Hoeyer, Dorthe Kristensen, Brit Winthereik, 273--290. Springer.

This chapter details the various techno-cultural assemblages giving rise to data collected to model and measure anthropogenic worlds, arguing that data-based technologies both represent and co-produce the Anthropocene. It begins with a review of scholarship emerging at the intersection of science an… Read more

Accountable Data: The Politics and Pragmatics of Disclosure Datasets

Lindsay Poirier. 2022. "Accountable Data: The Politics and Pragmatics of Disclosure Datasets." In 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 1446--1456. Association for Computing Machinery.

This paper attends specifically to what I call ''disclosure datasets'' - tabular datasets produced in accordance with laws requiring various kinds of disclosure. For the purposes of this paper, the most significant defining feature of disclosure datasets is that they aggregate information produced a… Read more

Attending to the Cultures of Data Science Work

Lindsay Poirier. 2023. "Attending to the Cultures of Data Science Work." Data Science Journal 22(1), 6.

This essay reflects on the shifting attention to the “social” and the “cultural” in data science communities. While recently the “social” and the “cultural” have been prioritized in data science discourse, social and cultural concerns that get raised in data science are almost always outwardly focus… Read more

talks

teaching

Introduction to Data Science

Undergraduate course, Smith College, Statistical and Data Sciences, 2022

Data science involves applying a set of strategies to transform a recorded set of values into something from which we can glean knowledge and insight. This course introduces students to concepts and methods from the field of data science, along with how to apply them in R. Read more

Data Science Capstone

Undergraduate course, Smith College, Statistical and Data Sciences, 2023

This one-semester course leverages students’ previous coursework to address a real-world data analysis problem. Students collaborate in teams on projects sponsored by academia, government, and/or industry. Read more

Data and Social Justice

Undergraduate course, Smith College, Statistical and Data Sciences, 2023

Data is a powerful tool for making claims - claims that can advance equity and social justice, as well as claims that can misrepresent civic issues and marginalize communities. This course examines how power operates in and through the production, analysis, and presentation of data, while helping students develop skill in approaching data science work in more ethical and equitable ways. Read more

Data Ethnography

Undergraduate course, Smith College, Statistical and Data Sciences, 2023

This course introduces the theory and practice of data ethnography, demonstrating how qualitative data collection and analysis can be used to study of data settings and artifacts. Read more