book cover of the author's second monograph — Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants (UC Press, 2023)
and Latinx communities bear the brunt of an increasingly aggressive immigration crackdown (2/2)
Read and listen to the complete post here: blog.castac.org/2026/04/data...
Today on Platypus, Dr. Melissa Villa Nicholas revisits her 2023 book, Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants, exploring its cultural and political resonance as ICE raids intensify across the country (1/2)...
Text reads: Call for papers, Special issue. The Cultural Lives and Afterlives of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Data, in Sexuality & Culture. Guest editors: Dr Amin Ghaziani & Dr Kevin Guyan. Expressions of interest due: 1 June 2026.
🔥 CALL FOR PAPERS: The Cultural Lives and Afterlives of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Data.
I'm co-editing a Special Issue of Sexuality & Culture with Amin Ghaziani.
📝 Full details: link.springer.com/collections/hcbbadjbha
#CfP #callforpapers #sexuality #gender #data
Screenshot of a tweet from AIGWU - All India Gig Workers Union (@aigwu_union) announcing a digital campaign from 3–11 July with the hashtags #UrbanCompanyExposed and #UCPartnersFightBack, and an “All India Protest Day” on 12 July in front of Urban Company offices across 17 cities. The tweet calls on people to stand with workers and demand action from tagged company leaders. Below the text is a four-panel graphic in red, black, and white featuring silhouettes of raised arms holding tools. Each panel reads “All India UC Partners’ Fight Back! 3–11 July 2023” and “UC Partners’ National Protest Day – 12 July 2023,” with additional text in different Indian languages calling for an end to ID blocking and worker exploitation. The tweet shows it was posted at 8:50 pm on 3 Jul 2023 and has 652 views.
Today on Platypus, Isha Bhallamudi, Anushree Gupta, and Eesha Kunduri unpack how the gendered nature of platform work affects labour organizing in India and the opportunities for solidarity and forms of care that can emerge.
Read to the complete post here: blog.castac.org/2026/04/gend...
Conceptual diagram with curved connecting lines linking key terms. On the left "indexicality" and "inclusive AI systems" connect to "incompleteness" and (queering) bridging". These central ideas link to "building" and "text" at the bottom. ON the rightv"incompleteness" also coneccts to "large image models," which relate to "fabulating" and "convivial GPT." All elements are interconnected, suggesting a network of relationships between AI systems, language, and interpretive processes.
capture research on AI-centered reimaginations of the “justice gap”, and finally, a close-up account of the challenges of “smart methods” in experimenting with collaborative digital ethnography (2/2)
Read and listen to the complete post here: blog.castac.org/2026/04/tech...
How can an Africanist lens of “incompleteness” (Nyamnjoh2017) inform feminist visions of AI in Africa? This Platypus blog series brings together work on LLMs that calls for a “relational, multimodal, and community-centered AI” beyond “totalizing linguistic (1/2)
A detailed black-and-white map of a 19th century London neighborhood, showing square dots that indicate cholera cases, which concentrate around Broad Street.
Read the complete post here: blog.castac.org/2026/04/from...
Today on Platypus, Joyce Lu, Katharina Rynkiewich, and Pat Kinley introduce a special series on the spatial, temporal, and conceptual boundaries of infection. The posts in this series critically examine how epidemiologic keywords are socialized among experts and the broader public.
this contribution unpacks three perspectives on resolutions as emerge in the technoscientific controversy at Idinthakkarai--nearest village to KKNPP.
Read and listen to the complete post here: blog.castac.org/2026/03/on-r...
A view of Kudankulam`s sea shore. In the foreground of the image, waves tocuh the shore where traditional wooden boats, painted in red and blue, are moored on beach sand. In the background, is the tomb of KKNP`s nuclear containment.
Today on platypus, Misria Shaik Ali reflects on how as people against Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP), Tamil Nadu endure the weight of an (un)resolved controversy...
An artistic illustration of computer servers with patterns of white and blue connected through lines that converge into a single line at the extreme left side
Today on Platypus, Samiksha Bhan asks how precision becomes idealized and produced in AI-assisted diagnostics under uneven labor conditions that makes data workers in the global South vulnerable to harm and distress.
Read and listen to the complete post here: blog.castac.org/2026/03/the-...
An animated peanut with a bowler hat and a white beard sits on one side of a campfire, opposite three smaller peanuts grinning back at him adoringly. Amid the chirping crickets and the crackling of the fire, the older peanut calls out: "Gather round my little legumes, it´s story time!"
Today on Platypus Eva Steinberg asks how Mars Candy Corporations use of romance and the family shapes our understanding of plant breeding, genetics, and climate change. Read the complete post here:
blog.castac.org/2026/03/love-a…
A collage of three photos. One is a zoomed out image of buildings in New York City, one is a shadow of a pillar of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the final one is an intricate iron window grille with palm tree visible through the window
This week on platypus
Meenakshi Mani shows that the everyday work of typically well-paid tech professionals—whether that be within specific domains like EdTech or within Big Tech—are by no means without frustration.
Read and listen to the complete post: blog.castac.org/2026/03/engi...
What might we learn by studying science and technology through the lens of stuckness? Today on Platypus, Michelle Venetucci and Shoko Yamada introduce a new series, exploring stuckness as a way to draw out structural conditions and meaning-making amongst experts:
blog.castac.org/2026/03/seri...
Today on Platypus, Rachel Lim explores how climate‑crisis ‘emergency’ rhetoric ignores colonial roots, urging us to confront racial capitalism and extractive violence:
blog.castac.org/2026/02/ther...
#STS
"What kinships & constellations come into view when we approach ethnography with an indifference to the boundedness of categories?"
SCA Contributing Editor Poornima Rajeshwar interviews Naisargi N. Davé about her Gregory Bateson Prize winning book "Indifference."
A deadly, high-profile assault on a New Delhi bus in 2012 led to the installation of panic buttons on city's autorickshaws. Today on Platypus, William Stafford Jr. writes about the complex interplay of suspicion, affordance, and securitization that played out after.
blog.castac.org/2026/02/a-pr...
An incredible contribution by @loicriom.bsky.social and @taschn.bsky.social to our Forum on Tech Oligarchy.
🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Don't forget our latest call to join CASTAC!
Today on Platypus, Rachel Lim explores how climate‑crisis ‘emergency’ rhetoric ignores colonial roots, urging us to confront racial capitalism and extractive violence:
blog.castac.org/2026/02/ther...
#STS
📩[Calls & Applications]
Contributions are invited for the edited volume “Theorizing Science Studies from Central and Eastern Europe”. Editors seek work that unsettles dominant categories through situated theorizing.
✍️Submit abstracts by March 31, 2026.
+Info tapuya.org/category/calls-applications/
🔎 CASTAC is still seeking applications for the Public Relations Manager role, a key board member who supports our organisation by managing social media and email communications.
🌎 Open for everyone in the world: castac.org/cfa-public-r...
🗓️Final day to apply: February 26.
How do we facilitate meaningful conversations amongst researchers across disciplines? Anushree, Debopriya and Malcolm reflect and offer some answers from their own work where they deploy labor as a lens to think with labor movements and write collaboratively:
blog.castac.org/2026/02/tran...
Do you want to get involved with CASTAC? This is your direct way to do so!
How do we facilitate meaningful conversations amongst researchers across disciplines? Anushree, Debopriya and Malcolm reflect and offer some answers from their own work where they deploy labor as a lens to think with labor movements and write collaboratively:
blog.castac.org/2026/02/tran...
🔎 CASTAC is seeking applications for the Public Relations Manager role, a key board member who supports our organisation by managing social media and email communications.
🌎 Open for everyone in the world. Ready to apply? More information on the process: castac.org/cfa-public-r...
🔎 CASTAC is seeking applications for the Public Relations Manager role, a key board member who supports our organisation by managing social media and email communications.
🔍More information on the role and process here: castac.org/cfa-public-r...
We invite you to apply!
❗️Happening tomorrow
The latest installment of our #PhDInConversation event series features a discussion of PhD Student Nai Lee Kalema's research on the World Bank Group’s Global Digital Transformation initiative.
📺 Join us online at 5:30pm here: buff.ly/kUuh9Mr
Genealogies aren’t nostalgia, they’re accountability tools. Panel 2 asks how historical continuities can inform more critical approaches to data politics. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#DataGovernance #STS