In Associate Professor Patrick Keilty’s new book Queer Data Studies, he argues that as anti-queer policies from big tech companies increase, alongside the over-policing of queer people and people of color, and growing digital surveillance at borders, it’s more important than ever to examine our data practices through a queer lens.
Patrick Keilty, Associate Professor
Keilty is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Professor Keilty’s research interests focus on the politics of digital infrastructures in the sex industries, adult film, and the materiality of sexual media.
Book Overview: Data, perilous and powerful, is both a worldmaking and a dismantling force. The collection of data about queer lives and bodies, the consequences of data analysis for queer subjects, and considerations of privacy and consent often present ethical dilemmas even as queer data expands our understanding of who and what counts. The need for queer analyses and perspectives has taken on a new sense of urgency in light of hostile antiqueer policies by major technology companies, the security theater of airports, the disproportionate rates of policing queer people and people of color, digital surveillance in border security, and the proliferation of digital health records.
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