October 30, 2019 / 7 PM / Reading Group Meeting Join us for another edition of our Data Sciences and Society Reading Group meeting. This time, we…… Read more “10/30/2019 Genomics: Precision and Uncertainty in a World of DNA Data”

11 September, 6 PM / Reading Group Meeting / We are kicking off the Sawyer Seminar with a reading group meeting. Brice Ménard will present on economies and data, and moderate a discussion of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson. Join us for the first event of the year!

18 October, 3-5 PM / Symposium / What are the roles of capital markets and complex financial products in global health management? This afternoon symposium seeks to explore the histories of international epidemic financing and the transformations we are seeing today with a special focus on the World Bank’s involvement in the current Ebola Epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

18-19 November / Movie Festival / Join us for movies that explore finance, economies, and data. The screenings will be followed by discussions with experts. Popcorn provided during screenings and pizza during discussions!

12 December / Symposium / This seminar seeks to go beyond narratives of everyday neoliberalization to explore the spirit of contemporary, data-powered capitalism. This symposium asks: What kinds of calculation practices have appeared in this moment—and which ones have become obsolete? What kinds of data-powered work cultures, consumption experiences, and production practices are in the making? How do data-oriented economies reconfigure everyday life? How do materials and material-specific expertise matter in data-powered capitalism?

Date TBA / Symposium / In this symposium, speakers will explore how the proliferation of new quantitative indicators meant to enact and assess these transformations have altered patterns of everyday life in so-called “resilient” communities. Treating resilience as a new kind of technocratic framing that portends limits to technocracy itself, speakers will also examine how the portraits of adaptation and adaptability brought into circulation by these programs have shaped experts’ relationships with the people they administer, as well as their understandings of their own roles in the world.

March 27-31, 2020 / Group Show / Join us for the Sawyer Seminar’s VR art group show curated by Bernadette Wegenstein (JHU Center for Advanced Media Studies). Featured artists are Lisa Bell Weisdorf, Haoran Chang, Tony Lugo from MICA’s Mount Royal School of Art. This group show is presented in collaboration with artist and curator Luca Buvoli.

1 April, 2020 / 7 PM / Screening and Artist Talk / Join us for a screening of Edoardo Kac’s “Inner Telescope” and a post-screening talk by the artist. “Inner Telescope” by Eduardo Kac is a space-poem freed from the constraints of gravity. It gives us a tool to rethink our relationship with the world and our position in the Universe. It was realized in orbit by French astronomer Thomas Pesquet, 400 km away from Earth on February 18, 2017.

9-10 April, 2020 / Organizer: Veena Das / TBA

Friday, 6 March / Symposium From web cameras, RFID transmitters, drones, satellites, and buoys, the world is increasingly seeded with powerful technologies that can record, process, transmit…… Read more “3/6/2020 Sense, Sentience, Sensors”