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Paper short abstract:

Using the example of a case study into data-driven carceral technologies, this paper highlights the affective negotiations of power and identity that can occur when student researchers engage in the politics of the research site to contribute STS perspectives and share research results.

Paper long abstract:

The conference theme asks how we, as researchers, can contribute to social transformations through mobilising STS sensibilities. This can cause tensions when the sites of these transformations are also those maintaining inequalities and injustice. In this paper, I outline how messy and affective negotiations of power and identity can influence research, its reception, and its effects. I draw on experiences from my research on data-driven carceral technologies produced through the academic-industrial complex. Through analysing Freedom of Information Requests, I identified details that suggested people in hospitals were exposed to potentially harmful situations due to these technologies.

During the aftermath of this research, through actively engaging in the situation, I became entangled in the politics of the institutions I had studied. Discovering and reporting a data breach, collaborating with campaigners, and sharing research with other academics led to me assuming the identities of not only ‘researcher’ but also those of ‘activist’ and ‘consultant’. These identities were sometimes strategically chosen, but at other times assigned, to myself and others who were attempting to question the power structures that validated the use of these technologies. Consequently, our ability to ‘mobilise’ STS perspectives on scientific knowledge, technology development and use, can become intimidatingly dependent on negotiating the same dynamics that our work critiques.

This demonstrates the need for a critical and collaborative discussion about how we, as researchers but particularly as students, can safely and carefully intervene with findings that have ethical implications and should be actioned before publication is feasible.