Cycle de conférences 2025-2026

Anthropology of Practices, Power Issues
and Critical Perspectives in the Digital Age

PRESENTATION

The LexUM Chair's 2025-2026 Conference Cycle will be devoted to the anthropology of the digital. This event will bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to explore the social, cultural and institutional transformations brought about by digital technologies.

The digital is the backdrop to our daily lives, a place where opinions, actions, commercial exchanges, conflicts and reconciliations are woven. But the digital is not just a vector, it is also a powerful actor, whose organization, control and regulation are crucial issues today.

This series of conferences explores the many facets of digital technology through the prism of anthropology. More than a mere technical description, the aim is to examine the profound dynamics at work between digital technology and human societies. How does digital technology shape our identities, our social relations, our cultural practices, our forms of engagement and our imaginations?

This will undoubtedly involve questioning dominant discourses, which all too often present digital technology as a radical break with the past and a universal phenomenon. The idea of novelty needs to be deconstructed, by showing how digital tools are part of historical and cultural continuities, and how they are appropriated, hijacked and transformed by social actors. Particular attention will be paid to perspectives from different cultural contexts, giving a voice to those who have been marginalized by the dominant narratives.

From a methodological standpoint, we will be attentive to the specific challenges posed by the study of digital worlds. How can we adapt traditional ethnographic methods to fields that unfold online, but are also interwoven with offline realities? How can we study practices that are often invisible, fleeting or ephemeral? We will explore innovative approaches that combine participant observation, massive data analysis, creative digital methods and autoethnographic narratives.

This series of conferences will address the difficult questions of digital regulation, in the broadest sense of the term. How are states, international organizations and civil society players seeking to regulate digital platforms, artificial intelligence and data flows? What are the implications of these initiatives for democracy, human rights, innovation and cultural expression? We'll look at the geopolitical tensions at play around control of the Internet and artificial intelligence, as well as the struggles over the appropriation and misappropriation of digital tools. We will also examine how algorithms and data models can reinforce social inequalities and discrimination.

This cycle of conferences will not be a simple succession of theoretical reflections, but will also be an opportunity to share concrete case studies, carried out in different fields around the world. These concrete examples will illustrate the diversity of digital experiences, socio-technical controversies, online communities, forms of activism, and the challenges of artificial intelligence.

This lecture series is aimed at researchers, practitioners and students wishing to enrich their knowledge and engage in constructive dialogue on the critical issues linked to digital technology in contemporary society.

CONFERENCES

De l’arbre au réseau: la quête généalogique à l’époque des plateformes numériques

Débora Krischke Leitão is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal and holds a PhD in social anthropology (UFRGS, 2007). Her methodological approach focuses on ethnography, and in digital anthropology, she has directed her work towards video games and digital worlds, with a particular emphasis on experiments in gender and sexuality. Throughout her career, she has also worked on themes related to the body, fashion, and consumption. As a researcher at the Cultures – Arts – Societies Research Center (CELAT), she is currently exploring the interface between memory practices and digital technologies, analyzing how these practices redefine individuals' relationships to the past, territory, and ancestry.

Potentialités et limites de la démocratisation des technologies numériques face aux injustices sociopolitiques et épistémiques : étude de la participation citoyenne et des communs dans les makerspaces à Barcelone

Sandrine Lambert (Ph.D.) is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University (Montreal), affiliated with the Ethnography Lab and the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology.

Her research explores the relationship between democracy and technology, from the perspective of communities of practice, sociotechnical imaginaries, and infrastructural issues. Her postdoctoral project focuses on governance and energy issues at a data storage center in Montreal.

Sandrine Lambert holds a PhD in anthropology from Université Laval in Quebec City (2024). She conducted 18 months of fieldwork in Barcelona (2020 to 2022) on the potential of citizen participation and commons in places dedicated to digital manufacturing (Makerspaces, FabLabs, etc.). She won the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQSC) Paul-Gérin-Lajoie Rising Star Award in 2023 for her article on Coronavirus Makers published in the Canadian journal Anthropologica.

Uneventful emplacement: The making of a de-politicized hyperscale datacenter region in a digitally independent Europe

Brit Ross Winthereik is full professor and Head of Division at the Department of Technology, Management and Economics at Technical University of Denmark. Her research focuses on digitalization processes, infrastructure development, and the use of data and automation in/of the public sector. Her methodological outlook is ethnographic, and she develops experimental research methods and material-based analytics. Winthereik’s work figures in journals devoted to Science and Technnology Studies, Social Anthropology and Information Science. Among her books count 'Monitoring Movements in Development Aid: Recursive Infrastructures and Partnerships' (MIT Press, 2013), ‘Electrifying Anthropology’ (Bloomsberry, 2019), 'Experimenting with Ethnography' (Duke University Press, 2021), 'Handbook for the Anthropology of Technology' (Palgrave Handbook Series, 2021), and ‘Energy Worlds in Experiment’ (Mattering Press, 2021). She is an avid contributor to the public media discourse regarding digital welfare, equity, and inclusion. 

This content has been updated on 1 April 2026 at 16 h 30 min.