Postdoctoral Researcher – The Programmable City Project
The post will study algorithms and code used in smart city initiatives (broadly conceived) from a software studies perspective. As such, the project will critically examine how software developers translate rules, procedures and policies into a complex architecture of interlinked algorithms that manage and govern how people traverse or interact with urban systems. It will thus provide an in-depth analysis of how software and data are being produced to aid the regulation of city life in an age of software and ‘big data’. The primary methods will be a selection from those set out in the paper ‘Thinking critically about and researching algorithms’.
Description
The project will seek to critically examine such processes with respect to software produced for smart city initiatives. In so doing, it will examine how software developers translate rules, procedures and policies (for example, concerning drivers, vehicles and the transport network) into a complex architecture of interlinked algorithms that manage and govern how people traverse or interact with urban systems. As such, it will provide an in-depth analysis of how software and data are being produced to aid the regulation of city life and allow a rethinking of the concepts of governance, governmentality and mobility in an age of software and ‘big data’. The primary methods will be those set out in the paper ‘Thinking critically about and researching algorithms’ (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2515786).
Fieldwork will be carried out principally in Dublin, with a secondary site in Boston. Both cities are key sites of agglomeration for software production and both are experiencing forms of programmable urbanism. Having two case study sites will enable the comparing and contrasting of the how software is produced and employed in two locales.
The project is accompanied by a website that is updated on a rolling basis, acting as an online resource of materials and outputs generated through the case studies and a portal to other relevant publications, organisations and related projects. It also utilises Web 2.0 developments, including a project twitter account and a blog that details project progress and findings, observations about software and urbanism, and advertise relevant events. The project will organize three more workshops and a conference on themes related to the project. The project work and findings will be presented at relevant international conferences across a number of disciplines and foci. Outputs from the project will be published in international scholarly journals. The project data will be archived in a public repository (Irish Qualitative Data Archive) for further use by other researchers. There are monthly project meetings that all team members attend.
Nr of positions available : 1
Research Fields
Geography – Human geography
Sociology – Social shaping of technology
Information science
Anthropology
Career Stage
Experienced researcher or 4-10 yrs (Post-Doc)
Research Profiles
Recognised Researcher (R2)
Comment/web site for additional job details
http://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/progcity/category/news/
http://humanresources.nuim.ie/vacancies.shtml
Link http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/jobs/jobDetails/33962187