[DATAGOV Core] your highlights for the advisory board

[Stefania Milan]

Hello team, i would like to send an update to our advisory boards, for which I need your highlights. please reply to this thread. see one of the earlier mails (too long though) for inspiration, below.
it would be great to receive your list by the end of the week! thanks
Stefania
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From: Stefania Milan <S.Milan at uva.nl<mailto:S.Milan at uva.nl>>
Date: Friday, 13 February 2026 at 00:19
To: advisory-board at lists.datagovlab.net<mailto:advisory-board at lists.datagovlab.net> <advisory-board at lists.datagovlab.net<mailto:advisory-board at lists.datagovlab.net>>
Subject: December-January hights + kick-off
Dear Advisory Board members
we hope this message finds you well.

We are writing to share an update on our recent activities and to extend an invitation to join our kick-off event, should you be around and able to attend.

What we have been up to​—December-January DATAGOV highlights​
The team has been busy reading, learning, and writing. In early January, Giulia (Postdoc), Mattéo (PhD) and Sruthi (PhD) led the project "Dissecting Digital ID(ea)s: Investigating the Infrastructures and Imaginaries of Digital Identity<https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2026DissectingDigitalIDeas>”<https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2026DissectingDigitalIDeas> at the Digital Methods Initiative Winter School at UvA, where participants generated comparative findings on digital identity schemes across five countries.

Our first co-authored paper, by Giulia, Mattéo and Shruti, with some input from Jonas (Postdoc) and Stefania, is currently under review at the CPDP (Computer, Privacy, and Data Protection) conference, to be held in May in Brussels. In addition, Stefania submitted an article, now under review, to Urban Geography as part of a special issue on "Crisis-driven Digitalization and its Afterlives in Urban Governance”. Another (co-authored) article, "<https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/open-data-meets-data-justice>Open data meets data justice"<https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/open-data-meets-data-justice>, has been published in Internet Policy Review.

In December, Stefania  traveled to Brazil, where, alongside academic engagements, she presented the DATAGOV project at the Ministry of Education, thanks to the invitation and support of our Advisory Board member Fernando Filgueiras. She also delivered the inaugural lecture of the Francqui Chair<https://www.uhasselt.be/nl/faculteiten/school-voor-sociale-wetenschappen/sw-nieuws/francqui-leerstoel-prof-dr-stefania-milan-universiteit-van-amsterdam-aan-de-school-voor-sociale-wetenschappen> she holds at Universiteit Hasselt (Belgium) for the current academic year; the Chair unfolds in five thematic “episodes" exploring the DATAGOV research programme. As we speak, our three PhD students are in Oslo (Norway), to present at the workshop "Understanding and reimagining the Digital Welfare State”.

On the event front​​
We would like to flag two exciting calls for abstracts:
EASST 2026, Krakow (8–11 September): we’re convening a panel titled "Infrastructures of governance: Power and assemblages in the data-driven state”<https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst2026/p/18161>, with Jonas as convener.
III International Congress of Feminist Anthropology, Tarragona (1–3 July). A side—but highly topical—gig for DATAGOV. Giulia and Sruthi are co-hosting the panel "<https://congressos.urv.cat/congres-antropologia-feminista-2026/simposi/454>Digital feminist anthropology’s role in the face of online anti-feminist backlash"<https://congressos.urv.cat/congres-antropologia-feminista-2026/simposi/454>. If either of these speaks to your work, we warmly encourage you (or your students) to consider submitting an abstract!

Finally, we have been very busy planning the kick-off event. Some of you are already involved as speakers (for those we are not—expect invitations in the coming years!). We are now extending the invitation to all of you who may be interested and able to be able to fund their own travel.

The kick-off​ event will take place on 26-27 March 2026.
Day 1 will be an invite-only event hosted by the UvA Institute for Advanced Studies (with limited seating). If you would like to join, please let us know ASAP so we can reserve your spot.
Day 2 will feature a public lunch event, hosted by the contemporary arts space Framer Framed. A preliminary programme for both days can be found at the bottom of this email.

Organization-wise​
On the organization side, a skeleton website<https://datagovlab.net/> is now online (thanks to our amazing project manager, Meg!). We are working closely with a designer to craft our visual identity, with a redesigned, expanded website to follow. Five thought-provoking blog posts are about to go live in the coming weeks, so stay turned. We are also on LinkedI<https://www.linkedin.com/company/datagovlab/>n (thanks to Sruthi): please do take a minute to follow us!

Our artist-in-residence, Federico, is currently imagining and building a digital, self-run lab infrastructure to support our experimental and collaborative work—more on this soon. He is also reworking Le Grand Jeu<https://legrandjeu.net/>, a world-building board game he originally designed and developed for another EU project, adapting it as a device for data collection and awareness-raising.

We are proud of​
Sruthi has been selected for the third cohort of the Women in GovTech challenge 2026<https://govstack.global/govstack-women-in-govtech-challenge-wigtc-2026/>, organised by GovStack, the World Bank and the DPI Safeguards Initiative. The mentorship and training programme aims to empower women to design and develop safe, inclusive, and citizen-centric digital government services.

Finally, Meg will be leaving us at the end of the month to start a PhD at Goethe University Frankfurt (am Main), supervised by Azadeh Akbari. While we will miss her dearly, we are incredibly excited for this next chapter and we look forward to collaborating in new ways in the future.

All for now, and with best regards,
Stefania on behalf of the DATAGOV team

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