[STS-Africa] Call for Abstracts Panel "Moral Economies of Data in African Technosciences" SGAS/SSEA & VAD Conference, Basel, 26-28 Aug 2026
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EHRENSTEIN Vera
Dec 22, 2025, 6:13:09 AM (2 days ago) Dec 22
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Dear STS-Africa list members,
We would like to invite you to join us at the next joint conference of the Swiss Society for African Studies (SGAS/SSEA) and the Association for African Studies in Germany e.V. (VAD) in Basel, Switzerland, 26-28 August 2026.
We will be organizing a panel on the Moral Economies of Data in African Technosciences:
Please consider submitting an abstract, and feel free to circulate the call to your networks. The deadline is 11 January 2026.
Do not hesitate to write to us if you have any questions.
Best wishes,
Véra, James, Siri & Georges
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MORAL ECONOMIES OF DATA IN AFRICAN TECHNOSCIENCES
The African continent is fully immersed in the hype of digitally-driven development and a much-anticipated ‘data revolution’. High hopes are surrounding ‘open data’ as a solution for imparting knowledge and stimulating innovation that will foster global inclusion in a techno-determinist fashion. But what are the consequences of these promises of abundant information, openness, accessibility and inclusion for those whose job it is to produce technoscientific knowledge? This panel invites empirically grounded case studies that examine the moral economies of data production, management and sharing in various technosciences (e.g., meteorology, climate science, ecology, AI, data science, astronomy, genomics, biotechnology). We welcome papers investigating the ways in which scientists and engineers on the continent work with (or without) data, in academia, industry, the government and the nonprofit sector, often in contexts characterized by infrastructural precarity, lack of resources, and external financial dependency. The notion of a moral economy draws attention to the epistemological, organizational and ethical dimensions of data work. The contributions may, for example, explore how data sparsity and unreliable connectivity complicate access to technological systems and participation in global science; how data ownership, intellectual property, and scientific authorship are reconfigured through new research infrastructures, legal frameworks, and ethical guidelines; how scientists and engineers negotiate asymmetric relations to pursue local relevance and international recognition; how local actors try to reform moral economies of data predetermined by global norms. The panel will aim to move beyond the critique of structural inequalities to provide thick descriptions of concrete practices and their normative expectations.
Véra Ehrenstein (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS))
James Merron (University of Basel)
Siri Lamoureaux (EM Lyon Business School)
Georges Macaire Eyenga (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Université de Dschang)
***
MORAL ECONOMIES OF DATA IN AFRICAN TECHNOSCIENCES
The African continent is fully immersed in the hype of digitally-driven development and a much-anticipated ‘data revolution’. High hopes are surrounding ‘open data’ as a solution for imparting knowledge and stimulating innovation that will foster global inclusion in a techno-determinist fashion. But what are the consequences of these promises of abundant information, openness, accessibility and inclusion for those whose job it is to produce technoscientific knowledge? This panel invites empirically grounded case studies that examine the moral economies of data production, management and sharing in various technosciences (e.g., meteorology, climate science, ecology, AI, data science, astronomy, genomics, biotechnology). We welcome papers investigating the ways in which scientists and engineers on the continent work with (or without) data, in academia, industry, the government and the nonprofit sector, often in contexts characterized by infrastructural precarity, lack of resources, and external financial dependency. The notion of a moral economy draws attention to the epistemological, organizational and ethical dimensions of data work. The contributions may, for example, explore how data sparsity and unreliable connectivity complicate access to technological systems and participation in global science; how data ownership, intellectual property, and scientific authorship are reconfigured through new research infrastructures, legal frameworks, and ethical guidelines; how scientists and engineers negotiate asymmetric relations to pursue local relevance and international recognition; how local actors try to reform moral economies of data predetermined by global norms. The panel will aim to move beyond the critique of structural inequalities to provide thick descriptions of concrete practices and their normative expectations.
Véra Ehrenstein (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS))
James Merron (University of Basel)
Siri Lamoureaux (EM Lyon Business School)
Georges Macaire Eyenga (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Université de Dschang)
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