Postdoctoral Researcher, Data & Society Research Institute
Platypod Producer, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
Anthropology of Infrastructure | Computational culture | Critical Data Studies |
About Ana Carolina
Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes is a postdoctoral fellow with the Trustworthy Infrastructures team at the Data & Society Research Institute, producing knowledge at the intersection of anthropology and science and technology studies (STS).
Contact
Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Ana Carolina's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Platypod, Episode Twelve: Hacking Alternative Futures
Read the transcript here. Dr. Luis Felipe R. Murillo is a brilliant author and anthropologist. I sat with him to chat about his new book Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures published in 2025 by Stanford Press, and was deeply impacted by the richness of perspectives he describes in the book, and during our interview. (more…) (read more...)
Data Centers, Transnational Collaborations, and the Differing Meanings of Connection
Data centers are in the news. You have probably read or heard about them. It’s as if with the snap of a finger the news cycle has changed, and the latest trend is to focus on the need to develop infrastructure to power data centers, in the US at least, where one of us is writing from. A data center is a facility where data is processed or stored, or where computer power is redistributed, where “the cloud touches the ground” (Johnson 2023: 6-7). By focusing on the history of the data centers we research, our goal in this piece is to demonstrate how they are built on top of existing infrastructures, and do not exist in thin air. (more…) (read more...)
Space Anthropology with Savannah Mandel
View/Download the transcription for this episode. For this episode of Platypod, I interviewed space anthropologist Savannah Mandel about her new book Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration (Chicago Review Press, 2024) where she writes about commercial space exploration in the US based on her ethnographic fieldwork with SpacePort America in New Mexico, and with space policymakers in Washington DC. (more…) (read more...)