Zoom registration link

In this webinar we reject the fait accompli framing of AI in the classroom and illustrate the manifold ways AI is antithetical to the project of genuine sustainability and sustainability pedagogy more specifically. With insights from Christoph Becker, Vera Khovanskaya, and Eric Baumer we explore (a) the material impacts of AI, that is, the social and ecological consequences of these technologies that are often (intentionally) obscured, (2) the implications of institutional policies in higher ed that amount to a wholesale, often unreflexive, embrace of AI, and (3) how to push-back against AI in the classroom, and beyond. Please register in advance.

This free webinar is hosted by the Community of Practice on Sustainability Teaching at the University of Toronto, one of the initiatives of the Teaching & Learning Sub-Committee of the CECCS, in collaboration with the Just Sustainability Design Lab and the Labour Process and Technology Lab.

Thursday, March 12, 2026 1:00pm - 2:15pm ET (online)

Zoom registration link

The SDGs@UofT Student Awards program recognizes outstanding student research that advances the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through interdisciplinary scholarship across the University’s three campuses. The award supports graduate and undergraduate students whose work demonstrates academic excellence and meaningful contributions to sustainable development.

Han’s funded project, Designing with Near Data and Far Data: Co-designing with Communities for Reflecting and Visualizing Politics of Data for Sustainable Futures, explores how sustainability data shapes the ways people interact, design, and imagine urban futures.

Working at the intersection of human–computer interaction, design, and urban planning, Han collaborates with urban sustainability and civic technology groups in Toronto using ethnographic and design-oriented methods. Her research examines how data is produced, abstracted, and mobilized in community advocacy work. Building on these insights, she is developing reflective toolkits that reorient data practices toward alternative approaches to urban sustainability—approaches that foreground power, affect, and participation. By centering communities in the design of sustainability data practices, Han’s work contributes to more just and participatory forms of data-driven urban change. Her research exemplifies the kind of critical, engaged scholarship that the SDGs@UofT initiative seeks to foster.

Her paper, “Near Data” and “Far Data” for Urban Sustainability: How Do Community Advocates Envision Data Intermediaries?,” coauthored with Siyi Wu and Christoph Becker, also received the Best Paper Award at the 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW 2025) in Bergen, Norway.

We warmly congratulate Han on this well-deserved recognition and celebrate the impact of her work within and beyond the JSD Lab and the Faculty of Information.

Candidates interested in holding the fellowship at the Faculty of Information should first review the descriptions of available opportunities on the Faculty of Information website. They should then contact the listed supervisor—and co-supervisor, if applicable—to discuss the possibility of working together on the final application, due April 1.

Research Theme

Post-growth Human–Computer Interaction: 21st Century Information Technologies for Life Beyond the Polycrisis
Supervisor: Prof. Christoph Becker

As our world’s linked ecological and social crises deepen, the intensifying risks of climate and social collapse ask us how we intend to relate to the rest of nature, the planet, and each other. The science is clear: on a finite planet, the expansion of material activity we know as “economic growth” is ending. The ecological response is “post-growth”: to equitably transform our socio-economic systems to overcome their growth addiction. Post-growth is gaining traction.

This fellowship asks: How does a post-growth world change what we consider “good” information technology? Today’s technologies are shaped by our societies’ addiction to unsustainable extractive accumulation. But alternative visions, theories, organizations, practices, and technologies already exist. Alternative social media and worker-owned tech co-ops center principles of care, community, and mutual aid; digital commons are collectively governed in global infrastructures to support local production and repair. The emergent field of post-growth computing prioritizes sufficiency over efficiency, repairability over obsolescence, conviviality over convenience, commoning over commodification, care over control, autonomy over automation, and relationality over separability.

This fellowship centers these values and develops pathways for post-growth computing, asking questions such as:

1. How do organizational structures support and constrain ecological and relational responsibilities in post-growth technology development?
2. What if we build technology that centers sufficiency, care, conviviality, and cooperation? How do these values materialize socio-technically?
3. What notions of scalability are appropriate to post-growth?

The fellow will join a growing global network of communities and researchers who envision and build emerging convivial technologies for resilience, care, and cooperation.

Learn more about the fellowship

Find more information on the Faculty of Information website.

For questions about the application process at the Faculty of Information, please contact
research.ischool@utoronto.ca

Interested in this research theme?
If you are interested in Post-growth Human–Computer Interaction: 21st Century Information Technologies for Life Beyond the Polycrisis, contact Prof. Christoph Becker to discuss project ideas and fit with the fellowship before applying.

Contents

WELCOME TO THE LAB!
ACHIEVEMENTS AND COLLABORATIONS
PROJECTS
RESEARCH FUNDING
PUBLICATIONS
COMING UP

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Welcome to the Lab!

This fall, the JSD Lab welcomed four graduate students.

Nadia Mariyan Smith is a PhD student in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. With a background in community work, they are interested in justice-oriented, more-than-human design approaches that emphasize collective well-being and ecological sustainability. Nadia holds a Master of Information in User Experience Design and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography.

Nils Bonfils is a PhD student in the Faculty of Information at UofT. After completing his BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science at EPFL, he worked in the banking and telecom industries as a Software Engineer for a few years. This allowed him to recognize the proportions and unsustainability of modern technological trends. He decided to pursue a PhD to explore and understand alternative ontologies in which information technology practices can be made more sustainable. His research interests span across Information, Computer Science, STS and the Environment. Other subtopics of interest are permacomputing, technology otherwise, convivial computing and digital degrowth.

Rowan O.A. Munson is a PhD student at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research interests focus on reconnecting technology to people, place, and planet. He is particularly interested in methods that are participatory, that broaden perspectives beyond WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) contexts, and that bridge academic theory and industry practice to create real-world impact. Previously, Rowan managed social research projects for UK Government agencies and charities, and published and lectured in Health and Social Care. He has advocated for policy changes to address social and environmental injustices and continues to engage in advocacy efforts to drive meaningful change. He holds an MSc in Behavioural and Data Science from the University of Warwick, UK; and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, UK.

Cristian Velasquez is an artist, photographer, and specialist in digital communication strategies and content production. He is currently pursuing a Master of Information at the University of Toronto, where he also leads communications and engagement for both the Just Sustainability Design Lab and the Knowledge Media Design Institute. Cristian’s artistic practice centers on documentation, making marginalized cultural practices and community histories visible. Over the past two years, he has been developing an ongoing visual archive of Toronto’s nightlife and culture. He has previously worked at the University of Toronto Scarborough Library, where he led initiatives to mobilize digital collections. In Colombia, he worked at the Ministry of Culture, contributing to the design and implementation of inclusion and diversity policies, advancing national literacy initiatives, and supporting public education and engagement.

The JSD Lab is happy to host two International Graduate students in 2025.

Victoria Landau investigates how cultural and research institutions approach digital sustainability, preservation, and curation. Her doctoral research at the University of Basel examines how institutional decision-making shapes heritage collections, both analog and digital, and how open standards support long-term access and preservation. We are grateful for the insight and energy she brought to our community. Wishing you continued success on your PhD journey, Victoria!

Verena Müller is a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Munich whose work connects technology, law, and environmental sustainability. After completing her degree in Law, she joined the Professorship for Law, Innovation and Legal Design at TUM as a researcher and doctoral candidate. Her research spans the intersection of technology, society, and regulation. Her current project focuses on AI regulation and environmental sustainability, exploring innovative approaches to integrate law and AI practices to promote “Sustainability by Design.” Verena joins us for Fall 2025 and Winter 2026.

Achievements and Collaborations

“Near Data” and “Far Data” for Urban Sustainability: How Do Community Advocates Envision Data Intermediaries?” received a Best Paper Award at ACM CSCW 2025.

Authored by Han Qiao, Siyi Wu, and Christoph Becker, the winning paper explores how community organizations navigate and negotiate data, ranging from local, lived information (“near data”) to large scale, processed datasets (“far data”). The study uncovers design possibilities for tools that center community expertise in building sustainable urban futures. PhD Candidate Han Qiao, who presented the work, grounds her doctoral research in a deceptively simple question: How do our everyday encounters with data influence the way we imagine—and shape—the cities around us? Her dissertation examines how our interactions with data inform our relationships to physical spaces and our collective imaginaries of urban futures.

This research continues through the School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant (2025–2027), in collaboration with the Visionary Communities team in Scarborough. Together, we are developing practices that make heavily processed (far) data relevant for local knowledge contexts and aspirations, and re-embed community generated knowledges and aspirations (near data) in a far-data context to help municipal decision-makers better recognize, value, and act upon the insights and aspirations of community-based changemakers. Read the full text.

Climate Change: What Is Computing’s Responsibility? Reflections from the Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop

In March 2025, a group of leading practitioners, policy experts, and researchers — including Christoph Becker — convened at Dagstuhl Leibniz Center for Informatics in Germany on invitation of the ACM to examine a pressing question: What is computing’s responsibility in the current climate crisis? The resulting Dagstuhl Manifesto is a wide-ranging call for a fundamental shift in how computational systems are designed, deployed, and governed.

The Manifesto challenges the assumption that efficiency gains or technological optimism alone can offset the rapidly escalating environmental impacts of digital infrastructures. Instead, it argues for reorienting computing toward sufficiency, long-term durability, human rights, and planetary boundaries. It underscores the need for transparent environmental assessments, a stronger role for computing professionals in shaping digital policy, and a renewed commitment to climate-conscious education and practice. For those working at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and justice, this document offers an essential framework for the years ahead. Read the full text.

Resisting GenAI and Big Tech in Higher Education

On November 25, an international panel of scholar-activists came together to examine the expanding influence of generative AI across universities and the urgent need to push back. From escalating energy and water consumption to disruptions in learning, academic integrity, and governance, the session unpacked the social, environmental, and political risks of AI’s rapid adoption.

Speakers included Christoph Becker (University of Toronto), Mary Finley-Brook (University of Richmond), Dan McQuillan (Goldsmiths, University of London), Sinéad Sheehan (University of Galway), Jennie Stephens (National University of Ireland Maynooth), and Paul Lachapelle (Montana State University). They shared concrete examples of resistance and refusal, offering pathways for collective action and for challenging the narrative that AI’s expansion is inevitable. If you missed the live event, you can now watch the full recording here

From Tech Lash to Tech Fash: Strategic Reflections on a Decade of Collective Organizing in Computing

On August 19, as part of the Aarhus 2025 conference, this workshop brought together seasoned and early-career technologists, practitioners, and scholar-activists to collectively reflect on how the field has shifted over the past decade from what Tamara Kneese has described as “techlash” to “tech fash” (Kneese, 2025). Participants explored how lessons from struggles around misinformation, algorithmic bias, surveillance capitalism, and tech worker organizing might inform contemporary resistance to the growing power of a techno-fascist oligarchy. By bridging past and present moments, the session created space for collective sense-making and strategic thinking about how to respond to today’s intersecting social, political, and technological crises.

Learn more about the discussions and reflections from the workshop:

Linda Huber, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Alicia DeVrio, Jensine Raihan, Cella M. Sum, Lynn Dombrowski, Justine Zhang, Christoph Becker, Lilly Irani, P. M. Krafft, and Margaret Hughes. 2025. From Tech Lash to Tech Fash: Strategic Reflections on a Decade of Collective Organizing in Computing. In Adjunct Proceedings of the Sixth Decennial Aarhus Conference: Computing X Crisis (AAR Adjunct ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 26, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3737609.3747097

Two of our members are now PhD Candidates!

Eshta Bhardwaj defended her thesis proposal titled “Adopting a Data Curation Lens for Rigorous, Reflexive, and Responsible Machine Learning Data Practices.” Her research focuses on the role of data practices within machine learning and how to augment ML dataset development processes with data curation principles, concerns of fairness, accountability, and transparency in “data work” within predictive modelling, and how to design interventions in data practices to aid in decision-making for environmental sustainability.

Han Qiao defended her thesis proposal titled “Designing with Data Near and Far: Making Information Visceral for Imagining and Navigating Sustainable Futures.” Her ongoing work in human-computer interaction looks into how data and data tools shape our relationship with urban spaces and collective imagineries of urban futures. She hopes to continue exploring ways of supporting interaction with data through creative practices and understanding the effects of these alternative ways of visualizing data.

Projects

Save the AI: Holding Big Tech Accountable through Creativity and Humour

This February, the JSD Lab launched Save the AI, a creative campaign that turns critical insights about AI’s environmental and social impacts into engaging public materials. Thanks to collaborators across the world, the campaign is now available in nine languages.

Save the AI uses humour as a bridge—connecting people’s basic needs such as clean water, electricity, and air to the resource-intensive infrastructures powering AI. By bridging the psychological distance between everyday life and far-off data centers, the project invites people to rethink the hidden footprints of today’s technological systems.

Our team presented this work at ACM FAccT 2025, COMPASS 2025 and KDD 2025.

Han Qiao, Eshta Bhardwaj, Victoria G. D. Landau, Nils Bonfils, Monica Iqbal, Olya Jaworsky, Rowan O.A. Munson, Lena Rubisova, Nadia Mariyan Smith, Ayusha Thapa, and Christoph Becker. 2025. Are You Thirsty? So is Your AI. Proc. of the 2025 ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS ‘25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 811–816. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715335.3736308

Eshta Bhardwaj, Han Qiao, Rowan O.A. Munson, and Christoph Becker. 2025. Humour as Resistance: Creative Approaches to Data Center Accountability. Proc. of the 2025 ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS ‘25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 831–836. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715335.3737682

Toronto–Warwick Collaboration on Data Justice, Social Justice, and Sustainability

The JSD Lab (University of Toronto) and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick) have launched a new partnership to strengthen research and PhD training at the intersection of Data Justice, Social Justice, and Sustainability. Funded through the 2025–2026 University of Toronto–University of Warwick Joint Seed Fund, the initiative is led by Dr. Siddharth De Souza and Professor Christoph Becker, and organized by PhD Student Rowan O.A. Munson.

Emerging data technologies often exacerbate social inequity and climate change, two of the most pressing challenges facing the world today, with their capacities to digitally monitor, sort, and control individuals and communities while consuming vast human and planetary resources in the process. The Universities of Toronto and Warwick are preparing our PhD students to take a leading role in addressing these global challenges by taking a global approach to PhD research and education that centers Data Justice, Social Justice, and Sustainability in Technology Design.

The project is already underway, with three workshops hosted between November and December, 2025:

“In which we shall question the supposed inevitability of artificial intelligence and what we might do about it.” With contributions from T.L. Cowan, Alessandro Delfanti, Noortje Marres and Sanjay Sharma.

“Methodological Approaches to Data Justice, Social Justice, and Sustainability.” Featuring Han Qiao, Kavin Narasimhan, Nadia Mariyan Smith and Nils Bonfils.

“Academic as Activist: The role of the university in facilitating social change.” With contributions from Siddharth De Souza, Rafael Grohmann, Carlos Cámara-Menoyo, and Vera Khovanskaya.

LIMITS 2025: Computing Within Planetary Boundaries

JSD Lab Lead Christoph Becker co-chaired LIMITS 2025, a globally distributed, online-first conference focused on envisioning and enacting forms of computing that respect and operate within planetary boundaries. With over 200 participants joining from multiple continents, LIMITS continues to grow as the central venue for rethinking computing in a world of ecological and social constraints. This year LIMITS features two contributions from the JSD lab:

An Empirical Inquiry into Surveillance Capitalism: Web Tracking by Nils Bonfils at LIMITS 2025

Nils Bonfils presented new empirical research on the mechanisms of Surveillance Capitalism as they unfold across the contemporary web. Drawing on longitudinal data from WhoTracks.Me (2017–2025) and publicly available SEC filings, the study maps the tracking practices of major tech companies—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. The analysis highlights Google’s pervasive presence across the web, proposes a three-tier hierarchy of GAFAM actors in the surveillance ecosystem, and identifies emerging forms of tracking designed to evade detection. The work also reflects on the broader social and environmental costs of tracking-driven business models and points to alternative technologies, such as the Gemini protocol, that challenge extractive data practices. By grounding discussions of Surveillance Capitalism in empirical evidence, this contribution strengthens ongoing efforts to rethink digital infrastructures in more equitable and sustainable directions.Read the full text here.

Exploring the World3 Model to Assess Computing’s Impact on Planetary Boundaries by Nara Guliyeva, Eshta Bhardwaj, and Christoph Becker

Another contribution from the JSD Lab examined whether the updated World3-03 system dynamics model, a foundational tool first introduced in Limits to Growth, can be adapted to understand how today’s rapidly expanding computing infrastructures affect planetary boundaries.

With global data center development accelerating, particularly in support of AI systems, the authors asked whether World3-03 could meaningfully simulate the environmental consequences of resource-intensive computing. By integrating new AI-related variables, including data-center-driven pollution and growth trajectories, the team created an augmented scenario within the model. Their findings show that the model responds predictably to these additions, indicating that World3-03 is a viable quantitative tool for exploring how computing contributes to ecological strain. The paper outlines future research directions for using system dynamics to study the long-term environmental implications of AI and data infrastructure—supporting deeper, evidence-driven conversations about the sustainability of computing within planetary limits.Read the full text here.

The LIMITS community brings together designers, engineers, artists, and scholars to explore questions around resource constraints, climate justice, transitional systems, and alternative imaginaries for technology design. Christoph Becker will also co-organize LIMITS 2026

Research Funding

Alongside the School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant supporting our project Centering Community in Data Ecosystems: Integrating Near Data and Far Data for Just Sustainable Neighborhoods, and the Toronto–Warwick Joint Seed Fund for Developing Collaboration in Research and Education, the JSD Lab was also pleased to receive funding from NSERC and SSHRC:

NSERC Discovery Grant (2025–2030) Evidence-based sustainability assessments for ecologically responsible decision-making in software engineering

SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2025–2027) Text Mining Higher Education Discourse for New Insights on Sustainability: A Pilot Study. Co-PI: Elizabeth Buckner, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Publications

Explore recent publications from the JSD Lab members and collaborators:

Priyanka Verma, Christoph Becker, and Samar Sabie. 2025. 17 Years of Fintech for Financial Inclusion: A Systematic Review and Critical Value Analysis. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 9, 7, Article CSCW358 (November 2025), 33 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757539

Vishal Sharma, Asra Sakeen Wani, Raphaël Marée, Christoph Becker, Douglas Schuler, Aparajita Marathe, Neha Kumar, Han Qiao, Rikke Hagensby Jensen, and Anupriya Tuli. 2025. Challenging the Growth Narrative in and Through HCI. XRDS 31, 4 (Summer 2025), 12–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3744691

Han Qiao, Eshta Bhardwaj, Victoria G. D. Landau, Nils Bonfils, Monica Iqbal, Olya Jaworsky, Rowan O.A. Munson, Lena Rubisova, Nadia Mariyan Smith, Ayusha Thapa, and Christoph Becker. 2025. Are You Thirsty? So is Your AI. Proc. of the 2025 ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS ‘25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 811–816. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715335.3736308

Eshta Bhardwaj, Han Qiao, Rowan O.A. Munson, and Christoph Becker. 2025. Humour as Resistance: Creative Approaches to Data Center Accountability. Proc. of the 2025 ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS ‘25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 831–836. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715335.3737682

Han Qiao, Siyi Wu, and Christoph Becker. 2025. “Near Data” and “Far Data” for Urban Sustainability: How Do Community Advocates Envision Data Intermediaries? Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 9, 2, Article CSCW003 (May 2025), 30 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3710901

Nils Bonfils, 2025. An Empirical Inquiry into Surveillance Capitalism: Web Tracking. Post-proc. paper presented at LIMITS 2025: 11th Workshop on Computing within Limits. (June 2025), 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.07454

Nara Guliyeva, Eshta Bhardwaj, Christoph Becker, 2025. Exploring the Viability of the Updated World3 Model for Examining the Impact of Computing on Planetary Boundaries Post-proc. paper presented at LIMITS 2025: 11th Workshop on Computing within Limits. (June 2025), 25 pages https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.07634

Bran Knowles, Vicki L. Hanson, Christoph Becker, Mike Berners-Lee, Andrew A. Chien, Benoit Combemale, Vlad Coroamă, Koen De Bosschere, Yi Ding, Adrian Friday, Boris Gamazaychikov, Lynda Hardman, Simon Hinterholzer, Mattias Höjer, Lynn Kaack, Lenneke Kuijer, Anne-Laure Ligozat, Jan Tobias Muehlberg, Yunmook Nah, Thomas Olsson, Anne-Cécile Orgerie, Daniel Pargman, Birgit Penzenstadler, Tom Romanoff, Emma Strubell, Colin Venters, and Junhua Zhao, 2025. Climate Change: What is Computing’s Responsibility? (Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 25122). In Dagstuhl Manifestos, Volume 11, Issue 1, pp. 1-18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/DagMan.11.1.1

Harshit Gujral, Om Damani, Anshul Agarwal, Christoph Becker, Meredith Franklin, Teresa Kramarz, Ronak Sutaria, Sagnik Dey, Steve Easterbrook, 2025. Reimagining urban air-quality governance: A systems-thinking framework. The Science of the Total Environment, 1010, 181059. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.181059

Coming up

JSD Lab at CHI 2026, the World’s Leading HCI Conference

We’re delighted to share that the JSD Lab will have two contributions at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026), the premier international venue for Human–Computer Interaction research. CHI 2026 will take place in Barcelona at the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona.

Crip HCI: Cyborg Perspectives on Disability Justice Professor Christoph Becker brings together a collective of disabled researchers and artists in organizing Crip HCI: Cyborg Perspectives on Disability Justice. This workshop brings together medical “cyborgs”—individuals living with devices such as insulin pumps, prosthetics, pacemakers, and sensors—to reflect on the politics, vulnerabilities, and creativity embedded in cyborg life. Grounded in disability justice, crip theory, and lived experience, the workshop challenges extractive, techno-solutionist approaches and centers the knowledge of disabled people as foundational to imagining new sociotechnical futures. Participants will share work, build community, and explore how cyborg perspectives can reshape research, design, and policy in HCI. More info here

Cultivating Pedagogies for Post-Growth HCI

A cross-institutional team including the JSD Lab researcher Han Qiao and Professor Christoph Becker will co-organize Cultivating Pedagogies for Post-Growth HCI, a workshop that asks how HCI education can move beyond “bigger-and-faster” mindsets toward practices grounded in sufficiency, repair, and care.

Drawing on the growing field of post-growth HCI, the workshop invites educators, students, and practitioners to co-design a “living syllabus,” rethink evaluation systems, and explore how teaching itself can serve as an infrastructural practice for sustainable and just futures in computing.

This contribution continues the momentum from previous CHI workshops and strengthens an international community dedicated to post-growth teaching and practice. More info soon

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The Just Sustainability Design Lab Online

Han Qiao, Siyi Wu, and Christoph Becker. 2025. “Near Data” and “Far Data” for Urban Sustainability: How Do Community Advocates Envision Data Intermediaries? Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 9, 2, Article CSCW003 (May 2025), 30 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3710901

“Near Data” and “Far Data” for Urban Sustainability: How Do Community Advocates Envision Data Intermediaries?, examines how advocates use data in their work and how they envision data intermediaries tools for pursuing more sustainable urban futures. Based on interviews with 17 advocates from 23 community groups, the study introduces the concepts of “near data” and “far data,” identifying pathways for data intermediaries to align data exploration with storytelling, communicate context and uncertainty, and decenter artifacts for relationship-building. The quality of “near” and “far” describes how one relates to the data that they work with. This relationship is fluid, dynamic and relational. Near data and far data identifies two extremes on a spectrum of near and far. When one views, makes sense of, or works with data, the distance between the person and the dataset can sit anywhere on the spectrum. Thus this is not a binary categorical distinction. A dataset that is close to someone, might also appear to be far to others. For example, someone living in a neighborhood will likely have a very different relationship to that neighborhood’s active living score than someone encountering the same data from elsewhere. Similarly, a person living with diabetes may feel far closer to data generated by their glucose-monitoring device than someone without that lived experience. When data feels “near,” it is often accompanied by stronger emotional and visceral connections, and can afford a greater sense of agency to act. However, far data can also be valuable and necessary in many situations. Data that is abstracted, aggregated, or distanced can protect privacy, could reduce harm, and support the emotional labour of frontline workers.

We are currently working to further articulate this concept by examining what aspects of data shape how people relate to it. We also explore how reflecting on these relationships can make visible the politics and power embedded in data work, open up new design spaces, and support data practices grounded in data justice and data feminism. We hope to contribute to ongoing efforts to reimagine and pursue urban futures that are more just, sustainable and inclusive.

Speakers included Christoph Becker (University of Toronto), Mary Finley-Brook (University of Richmond), Dan McQuillan (Goldsmiths, University of London), Sinéad Sheehan (University of Galway), Jennie Stephens (National University of Ireland Maynooth), and Paul Lachapelle (Montana State University). They shared concrete examples of resistance and refusal, offering pathways for collective action and for challenging the narrative that AI’s expansion is inevitable.

Co-sponsored by:

Climate Justice Universities Union

Climate Campus Network

Resources

If you missed the live event, you can now watch the full recording here

More information available in this resource document with links to recent news, articles, movements, and organizations.

Links and resources shared by webinar participants here

Warwick PI: Dr Siddharth De Souza

U of T PI: Professor Christoph Becker

Funded 2025-2026 by the University of Toronto and University of Warwick Joint Seed Fund

The JSD lab will have an art and demo installation at the COMPASS conference on July 24 showcasing artifacts from Savethe.AI. Our installation will be at the Bahen Centre for Information Technology on the 2nd Floor from 9am-5pm, with the Arts & Demos reception from 5-6pm.

Come say hi to the organizers!

Han Qiao PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Eshta Bhardwaj PhD Candidate, Faculty of Information

Rowan O.A. Munson PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Nils Bonfils PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Nadia Mariyan Smith PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Victoria G. D. Landau Visiting PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Christoph Becker Professor, Faculty of Information and School of the Environment

Session Description: Our interactive CRAFT workshop session uses satire and creative expression to facilitate and strengthen collective organizing around the environmental damages caused by AI systems.

The JSD lab has developed a distributed satirical campaign to Savethe.AI which uses humour to connect individuals’ and communities’ needs for Earth’s resources with the evidence of just how much of these resources are now being claimed for the data centres running generative AI. By connecting our thirst with a data center’s cooling system, the campaign addresses psychological distance: it is very hard to relate personally to the distant data centers where generative AI models do their work.

In our CRAFT workshop session, we will build on the satirical angle and facilitate a creative humorous engagement with questions of individual agency, community experiences, and collective resistance. We collectively explore ecological and social impacts of data centers and platforms that are already felt by diverse communities. These impacts vary greatly in place and time and are documented primarily by the tireless work of organizers, civil society, and academics, while being obfuscated by the companies creating the situation.

Our workshop invites participants to collectively develop their own humorous ideas and materials that express the absurdity of those harms being taken for granted and denied.

Through this creative process, we hope to achieve both a collective learning process, foster a sense of collective agency, possibly develop visual materials that the community can use, and contribute to community building in the face of the issues of accountability, transparency, and ecological and social harms that result from rampant AI.

Please note that in order to attend, all participants must register for ACM FAccT. https://facctconference.org/2025/registration. More details about our CRAFT session can be found here on the FAccT schedule which also includes the Zoom event link.

Call for Participation: Join us for an interactive workshop that delves into the ecological and social impacts of data centers, the backbone of AI infrastructure. As AI scales up, so does the need for data centers, which has significant environmental and social repercussions often obscured by Big Tech. This workshop aims to illuminate these impacts and foster collective organizing around the harms caused by data centers.

In the first half, we will explore the local and global implications of data centers, encouraging participants to get to know the impacts of particular data centers in place. We will present key findings on the environmental degradation and social injustices linked to data center operations, highlighting the voices of grassroots organizers who have documented these harms.

The second half of the workshop will embrace creativity as a tool for resistance. We will work together, using humour, satire, and art to convey the increasing social and environmental resource consumption taking place in data centers. Together, we will brainstorm and develop visual materials that convey these messages, transforming despair into collective agency.

We invite activists, researchers, and community members to contribute their perspectives and creativity. By participating, you will help build a network of resistance against the negative impacts of data center infrastructure, fostering a sense of community and shared purpose.

Please register here to attend the workshop: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/EEYh7mnHE+oT97BSUUNCvVR+H5d4ft2h3gkOkcRmveM/. Please contact Eshta Bhardwaj for any questions.

Agenda:

• 200 - 220: Workshop Introduction
• 220 - 300: Guest Speaker Hanna Barakat’s talk on her recent Case Study Analysis of Data Center Development
• 300 - 330: Break
• 330 - 400: Organizer Han Qiao speaks about workshop themes: art, humour, satire, absurdity, viscerality
• 400 - 430: Attendees participate in an activity
• 430 - 530: Reflections
• 530 - 545: Workshop Conclusion

Guest Speaker:

Hanna Barakat

Organizers:

Eshta Bhardwaj PhD Candidate, Faculty of Information

Han Qiao PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Rowan O.A. Munson PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Nils Bonfils PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Nadia Mariyan Smith PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Victoria G. D. Landau Visiting PhD Student, Faculty of Information

Christoph Becker Professor, Faculty of Information and School of the Environment