Care, Collaboration, and Service in Academic Data Work: Biocuration as ‘Academia Otherwise’
Many contemporary scientific fields are data-driven: making use of the vast quantities of digital data that are now being produced in different domains. In this presentation I discuss the work of biocurators, an academic community who manage and organise digital data from the biosciences. While many bioscientists assume that the products of biocuration (such as databases of sequencing data) are fully automated, biocuration involves a rich set of digital and other practices and human labour. I discuss the work of biocuration, the ways in which it holds parallels with other forms of unrecognised and invisibilised labour, and the positive ways in which the values that animate it offer a kind of ‘academia otherwise’.
The lecture will be held in English.