Lecture: Johns on "On Data: Givens of Global Law"

On November 20, 2019, Fleur Johns (Univ. of New South Wales - Law) will deliver the 2019-2020 Annual Lecture of the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context at Queen Mary University of London. The topic is: "On Data: Givens of Global Law." Here's the idea:

This talk dwells on a medium in which people, places and things are being connected, divided, aggregated and distributed juridically on the global plane: digital data. It will explore how, to whom, under what conditions and in what formats digital data are being given in certain practices of contemporary international law: specifically, in aspects of international development and humanitarian work in which the adoption of digital data and data science techniques is being encouraged. More precisely, it will consider some ramifications of the growing digitization of two key knowledge formats for international law: facts and populations. It will ask what givens may be constituted or reconstituted – or what may be established, or re-established, about international law, legal actors, institutions and operations – in the process of this shift in knowledge practice. And it will touch, finally, on what might be at stake in these changing practices with regard to the CLGSC’s three, current thematic concerns: time and place; power and capital; aesthetics and materiality.