Talks and Lectures

Escaping the Cartographic Gaze

Event: Geospatial World Forum, 2019
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Date: 2-4th April, 2019

Social Change in the Data Society

Event: Guest lecture
Location: American University of Rome
Date: Novemebr, 2018

The Art of Data and value of nothingness.

Event: UK Mapping Festival (with BCS and SoC)
Location: ILEC Conference Centre, London, UK
Date: September, 2018

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Closing the divide: Data visualisations, organisational structures and representation in humanitarian mapping

With Amelia Hunt (Independent Researcher)
Event: FOSS4G
Location: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Date: August, 2018


New participatory spaces: The role of locating in resistance

Event: FOSS4G
Location: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Date: August, 2018


Neogeography and the insurrection of knowledges

Event: EASST2018: Meetings – Making Science, Technology and Society together
Location: Lancaster University, UK
Date: 25-28th July 2018

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Bigger Data, Bigger Divide? The role of Big Data and GI Analysis in redrawing the digital divide.

Event: International Development at Westminster: current research and future perspectives
Location: University of Westminster, London, UK
Date: June, 2018

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Defending Rights Defenders.

Event Chair
Organizers: Environmental Network for Central America.
Location: Tattershall Castle, London, UK
Date: September, 2017

Understanding Data.

Event: Lunchtime lectures at GeoPlace
Location: NAO, London, UK
Date: February 2017

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Mapping human rights defenders in Latin America.

Event: Latin America Conference
Location: TUC, London, UK
Date: December, 2016

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Cezanne the Cartographer.

Event: AGI GeoCom
Location: RGS, London, UK
Date: December, 2016

Data, Visualisation and Human Development.

Event: Oxford Big Data and Development Symposium
Location: OII, University of Oxford
Date: September, 2016
Presented with Dr. Joanna Boehnert.

This paper explores the risks of uncritical approaches to big data on issues of development with a focus on how it is harnessed in images. Accurate information is a basis for effective policy making, yet big data is far too often understood as empirically incontestable. This apparently evidence-based analysis can obscure more than it reveals. We examine how big data is being mobilized in data visualization on issues of human development in ways that serve ideological agendas. We will begin by examining how images work with a re-contextualization of impressionist art. A critic of Cézanne declared that his artwork was nothing more than an ugly untruth, a deliberate distortion of nature. Using this notion as a starting point, this paper questions how data visualisation illustrates trends and presents truth claims, through the privileging certain perspectives and importantly the rejection of others. We will then examine Max Roser’s Our World in Data (OurWorldinData.org) as an example of data visualization on issues of human development. Through these examples we will develop the concepts of digital positivism, datawash and darkdata as critical tools for approaching the communication of big data. Data visualization and artwork both reflect perceptions of the world, power relations, special interests and ideologies. The impressionists painted the unseen and unknown through painting voids. This paper posits that we could avoid the obfuscations of big data by understanding that its voids are political, but also that these voids might help us more clearly see power and ideology in data.
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Post-Brexit Solidarity and Latin America.

Hosted by: The Environmental Network for Central America
Location: Passing Clouds, London, UK
Date: 11 August, 2016

Bigger Data, Bigger Divide? The role of Big Data and GI Analysis in redrawing the digital information divide.

Event: Freedom of Information in Crisis Zones
Location: Penn State at University of London , UK
Date: May 25-27, 2016

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Mapping the Violence of Development.

Event: AAG Conference
Location: USan Francisco, USA
Date: April 2016

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How 2 Do It.

Event Organising Team
Location: Kings College, London, UK
Date: 9-10 April, 2016

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The Whole World Turns Upside-down: A future under The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Event: Latin America Conference
Location: TUC, London, UK
Date: December, 2015

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Walking the Tightrope: Activism and the Academy.

Event: Social Movements and Media Technologies
Location: Goldsmiths, London, UK
Date: December, 2015

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Exhibition of muralismo colectivo

Event Organising Team
Location: Senate House, London, UK
Date: October, 2015

How digital media, data and GIS are used in legitimizing and codifying local knowledge within the context of International Development.

Event: Transforming data: creative and critical directions in the arts and humanities
Location: University of Westminster, UK
Date: October, 2015

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Big Data and Development.

Event: Development Studies Association Annual Conference
Location: University of Bath, UK
Date: September, 2015

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Big Data and Development.

Event: RGS Annual Conference
Location: University of Exeter, UK
Date: September, 2015

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The Digital Toolbox of Social Movements – Social Media vs. Online Mapping.

Event: ICCG2015 7th Precarious Radicalism on Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility
Location: Ramallah, Palestine
Date: July, 2015

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Geo: The Big 5. Future cities, Security

Event Chair
Organisors: Association for Geographic information
Location: Kings Way Hotel, London
Date: 9 July, 2015

In my role as Conference Chair I presented the opening and closing remarks for the AGI Future Cities Conference drawing upon a broad range of urban studies literature, cinema, dystopian novels and the work presented in the panel sessions.
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Tools of Resistance: Using maps and social media to create spaces of protest around the extractive sector in Colombia.

Event: Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies. Meanings, Modalities and Implications. International Conference
Location: Alghero, Sardinia, Italy
Date: 24-26 June, 2015

Colombia’s internet connectivity has exploded over the last four years. Colombia has also “opened for business”, leading to an influx of extractive projects to which many social movements objected heavily. Studies on the role of digital medias within this kind of political mobilisation in developing countries are still relatively scarce. This paper, using document and theoretical analysis, interviews, surveys, GIS and content analysis from social media, examines the role of social media and geo-tagged uploads in protest movements and to what extent increased digital connectivity has helped spread knowledge about human rights and environmental issues, and how geospatial information helps to codify and legitimize this information. Results show that the use of social media in Colombia is still embryonic and hindered by strong hierarchical power structures within social movements, meaning its effect on political mobilisation is often limited, or negative. This implies that social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures, and that social movement organisations in Colombia need to further develop their knowledge dissemination strategies. The study goes on to ask whether it is then the geolocation of knowledge rather than solely the much lauded social media that will help legitimize knowledge around human rights and environmental abuses associated with the extractive industries in a way that moves beyond documenting abuses and towards holding those responsible to account.
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Using VGI and UGC to Document human rights abuses.

Event: Geospatial World Forum
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Date: 25-29 May, 2015

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Neogeography and the insurrection of knowledges.

Event: Education, Cultural Literacy and Collective Memory in Latin America
Location: ILAS, University of London
Date: 7 May 2015

New developments within ICT’s are, suggests Foucault, able to invert previous metaphors of the panopticon, with these new information technologies allowing for the challenging of elites. While this notion is subject to continuous debate, one such field where this inversion has been stark has been within the production of maps. Maps and spatial representations produced by local people have a long history, yet in the last ten years the field of cartography has moved in directions unimaginable just 20 years ago. Cartography, through increased access to digital platforms, has been slipping from the control of the powerful bourgeoisie bringing about the creation of ‘neogeography’ and the democratisation of participation. This in turn has created the potential for an ‘insurrection of knowledges’ in which GIS platforms allow for the expression of a variety of knowledges creating a more level playing field for comparing consensus and division. In turn allowing for a wider exploration of the cultural and political conditions that direct human understandings of the environment. These ‘counter-maps’ which express local knowledges in cartographic form can be a powerful tool in promoting the rights of communities. This paper seeks to show the ways in which they have been used in Latin America to go beyond spatial representations and towards eliciting competing localities and grounded truths which enunciate and draw conflict to the centre of attention.
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GIS, Big Data and Lessons from John Snow.

Event: GISR-UK
Location: University of Leeds, UK
Date: April 2015

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Digital Resistance: The use of Maps and Social Media in protesting large scale mining projects in Latin America.

Event: Social-Environmental Conflicts and Human Rights in Latin America
Location: ILAS, University of London, UK
Date: March, 2015

As peace comes to Latin America, the continent has been inundated with a new wave of invaders who seek to exploit the vast tracks of land and rich mineral resources, often at the expense of local populations. This has manifest itself in an influx of extractive projects to which many social movements have objected heavily. Studies on the role of digital media in these political mobilisations and in developing countries are still scarce. Using document and theoretical analysis, interviews, surveys, GIS and content analysis from social media, this study examines the role of digital and social media in protest movements from Colombia and El Salvador and explores the extent to which increased digital connectivity can help spread knowledge about human rights and environmental issues. Results show that the use of social media is still embryonic and hindered by strong hierarchical power structures within social movements, meaning its effect on political mobilisation is often limited, or negative. This implies that social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures, and that may be a need to further develop knowledge dissemination strategies. The study goes on to ask whether it is then community mapping, rather than the much lauded social media, that will help legitimize knowledge around human rights and environmental abuses associated with the extractive industries in a way that moves beyond documenting abuses and towards holding those responsible to account.
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Legitimizing UGC with GIS: Documenting human rights abuses in Syria.

Event: GeoMobLdn
Location: University College London, UK
Date: March, 2015

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Mapping the Violence of Development.

Event: Public Lecture
Location: University of Westminster, UK
Date: February 2015

A short discussion on the role of Geo Spatial technology in helping to understand and combat the systematic violence within the Development industry. Drawing upon a number of case studies and his work in Colombia and Central America, Doug aims to show that it is maps rather than the much lauded social media that will help highlight human rights and environmental abuses in a way that moves us beyond documenting abuses and towards holding those responsible to account.
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Mapping Resistance: The Case of El Salvador and Pacific Rim.

Event: Latin America Conference
Location: TUC, London, UK
Date: December, 2014

Securing Human and Environmental Rights with PGIS.

Event: AGI GeoCom
Location: Warwick, UK
Date: July 2014

Maps have been shown to be an incredibly important resource, especially in the environmental sector, but the costs are often prohibitive to their creation. This research is examining how publicly created online maps are able to support human rights and environmental justice. How do we open up mapping products to enable the worlds poor and grassroots movements to be able to create maps that support their causes, and thus giving them a bigger voice, and legitimizing their knowledge within the Development sector.
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Using PGIS and VGI to support Human Rights and Environmental Justice.

Event: ESRI UC 2014
Location: San Diego, USA.
Date: July 2014

Maps have been shown to be an incredibly important resource, especially in the environmental sector, but the costs are often prohibitive to their creation. This research is examining how publicly created online maps are able to support human rights and environmental justice. How do we open up mapping products to enable the worlds poor and grassroots movements to be able to create maps that support their causes, and thus giving them a bigger voice.
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