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Digital Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomy, Resisting Epistemic Violence
Time:
Friday, 17/Oct/2025:
9:00am - 10:30am
Location:Room 3a - 2nd Floor
Novo IACS (Instituto de Arte e Comunicação Social)
São Domingos, Niterói - State of Rio de Janeiro, 24210-200, Brazil
Presentations
Digital Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomy, Resisting Epistemic Violence
Eirliani Abdul Rahman1, Melissa Villa Nicholas2, Salwa Hoque3, Alpha Obike4
1Georgetown University; 2University of California Los Angeles; 3Emory University; 4UWI Mona and Western Jamaica Campus
The advancement and implementation of digital technology is often framed as progress; our panel counters this view and critically examines how data and technology can reinscribe or deepen preexisting social biases and inequities. Using interdisciplinary methodologies and working across disciplines, this panel locates the site of power in the digital space – whether in the Caribbean Community’s ICT infrastructures, digitization of law and legal records in Bangladesh, Latina immigrant communities’ engagement with technology, or Malay Indigenous reframing of data sovereignty. We highlight how communities face harm but also negotiate, resist, and reimagine digital technology.
This panel is transnational and offers diverse perspectives from across the globe, emphasizing perspectives from the Majority World. While our papers focus on the particularities of data injustices related to the legacies of colonialism from within the cultural contexts we study, there is also a broader connection that demonstrates the overarching epistemic violence, struggles of governance and sovereignty, and racialized and gendered inequalities that are tied to technology.
