PhD call: Public/private entanglements in educational digital infrastructures

Deadline for application: 1st October, 2023.

The widespread digitalization of the public sector has created new digital information infrastructures that enable data to flow between public and private institutions. As a result, commercial actors have gained a foothold in shaping public services and accessing citizen data. In fact, most digital ‘public’ services are delivered through digital interfaces that are ‘privately’ owned. This raises the question of whether the public sector has become too reliant on tech giants to provide digital public services and to what extent public administration can regulate and safeguard citizen data when it is in the hands of private sector companies. Within this thematic frame, the PhD sub-project is focused on conducting an ethnographic study of how citizen data becomes a matter of concern in emerging digital infrastructures and their concomitant political and economic arrangements, using the “Helsingør Chromebook case” as starting point.

The PhD will be part of the Algorithms, Data and Democracy project, located at DPU – Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Read the call in full here.