Data Science Institute

I am a feminist science studies scholar, with a focus on natural history, ecology, agriculture, and conservation. Growing up on a small farming community in the wetlands of southern India, I am acutely aware of what is at stake in redressing the histories of colonial extraction and climate catastrophe. I have been working on a book that charts the rise of a particular form of biodiversity conservation-the seed bank-that arose in the twentieth century but continues to be a focal point for efforts today. I am fascinated by how folks are convinced that a particular strategy for mitigating loss can secure the future of humanity. In my work, I trace the complexities that must be ignored to feel secure in decisions made on the behalf of others.

How does your research, teaching, or other work relate to data or computational science?

As an STS scholar my research engages the theories and practices that structure the identification, categorization, and organization of seeds and their meta-data in seed banks. Seed banking is a technoscientific enterprise that has come to represent the hope for human salvation through the capture and extraction of seeds, while at the same time serving as a reminder of the failure of humanity’s stewardship of life on Earth as evidenced in the loss of biodiversity (40% of plant species at risk of extinction). 

Steeped in the histories of standards, epistemology, and bioinformation, my work shows that with multiple possible systems of classification, it matters what kinds of archival strategies are used to sort and store meta information about the plants. Since it “matters what worlds world worlds,” in a chapter of my book manuscript in progress I narrate how the seed bank world’s worlding happens through inscription practices in the database. I probe the limits of data capture and ask how identity is determined and stabilized and for whom. The elisions, omissions, and erasures of local and indigenous identities of the seeds evidence the ‘empty fields’ of the seed bank database. These gaps of knowledge and history are what allow the grand narratives of biodiversity loss to persist. 

Dwelling on the tenuous relationship between the physical objects that are stored in the banks and the data about them that are stored on servers, I show that the choices to store and prioritize data about plants, traits, and genes reveal the expectations for the future held by scientists and administrators. I argue that for the project of transnational seed banking to have any value, the robustness of their data storage, organization, and access need to be challenged.

I teach STS courses that engage data, algorithms, and code to understand their impact on everyday life. I have participated in the DSI fellowship for faculty and will be planning a course in the future that is dedicated to these topics with the help of a DSI fellow. 

I also supervise undergraduate students from data and computer science who are interested in STS as an additional concentration.