A Conversation with Jonathan W.Y. Gray on Public Data Cultures with Cindy Anh Nguyen

Join Dr. Cindy Anh Nguyen in conversation with invited guest Dr. Jonathan W.Y. Gray on his newest book, Public Data Cultures.

Public data shapes what we know and how we live together. It is often digital, freely available and related to matters of shared concern, from global warming graphs to collaborative spreadsheets documenting mass layoffs.

Public Data Cultures explores the practices and cultures of how data is made public in the age of the Internet. Looking beyond familiar narratives of data as a resource to be liberated or protected, this book offers new perspectives on public data as networked cultural material, as medium of participation and as site of transnational politics. To better account for how data makes a difference, the book argues for a more expansive conception of what is involved in making data public. It focuses not just on removing restrictions but also on caring for arrangements involved in making data public in ways that grow shared understanding and solidarity in responding to the many intersecting troubles of our times.

Nurturing critical and creative engagements with data, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of media, science and technology studies and digital humanities, as well as artists, designers, journalists and activists working with data.

Bio: Cindy Anh Nguyen is Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles with appointments in Information Studies, Digital Humanities Program, and Asian Languages & Culture. Her forthcoming book, Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2026) uncovers how libraries functioned as both instruments of colonial dominance and an experimental space of public critique. Her transdisciplinary research examines the historical and socio-technical production of knowledge in Southeast Asia through libraries, encyclopedia, visual media, and language through feminist, decolonial, and critical approaches. Her work has appeared in Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asia, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, the Vietnamese American Refugee Experience Model Curriculum, and numerous edited volumes on history and digital humanities. She is also a public scholar and community artist. For more information, follow her work at cindyanguyen.com.

Bio:Jonathan W. Y. Gray (@jwyg) explores the roles of digital data, methods and infrastructures in shaping how we know and live together. He is the author of Public Data Cultures (Polity, 2025). At King’s College London, he is Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Culture. He is also co-founder of the Public Data Lab; research associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris); and has taught with the School for Poetic Computation in NYC. More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org.