Short presentation

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup is Associate Professor on the Promotion Programme in Modern and Digital Culture. She is PI of Data Loss: The Politics of Disappearance, Destruction and Dispossession in Digital Societies (DALOSS) funded by the European Research Council and the Danish Foundation for . The project is premised on the idea that datafication is inherently conditioned by loss, and that this loss can also be generative. Rather than framing loss retroactively as something that can be fixed, patched or recovered, then, DALOSS  investigates loss as actively constituted through social, political, and aesthetic relations. 

She received her PhD (in Modern Culture) from University of Copenhagen and MA (in Modern Culture) from the University of Copenhagen. She has been a visiting fellow at Duke University, Cornell University and Columbia University.    

Her research and teaching focuses on the politics and ethics of data, machine learning and digital infrastructures. She is particularly interested in how digitization and algorithmic processes are changing how we encounter, govern and practice knowledge infrastructures, and the political and ethical dimensions of these changes. Thylstrup is the author and editor of several books, including Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for the Age of Big Data (MIT Press, 2021), (W)ARCHIVES: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press 2021), and The Politics of Mass Digitization (MIT Press, 2019) (a "watershed work", JASIST). Thylstrup has moreover edited several special issues, including Big Data & Society, First Monday, and Philosophy of Photography and she has published in a range of journals including Journal of Cultural Economy, Digital Journalism, Media Culture & Society, Ephemera, and Internet Policy Review. She is a member of the Editorial Board for Elements in Literature and Objects, a new series within Cambridge Elements edited by Helen Smith and Chloe Wigston Smith. She is also part of the editorial collective of the open access series Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society.

She is the humanities representative in the University of Copenhagen Quantum Hub Network, where she explores the cultural and societal dimensions of emerging technologies such as quantum science and computing. This role reflects her ongoing commitment to bridging basic research in cutting-edge science with broader humanistic inquiry. Alongside this, she is deeply engaged in projects aimed at creating meaningful impact.

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup is a regular commentator on issues related to emerging technologies in Danish and international media, including including El País and The New York Times. She has consulted for a number of cultural heritage organisations, governments and NGOs on issues related to digitization and emerging technologies, including the Danish National Archives, The Danish Royal Library, Bodleian Libraries and DanChurchAid.

Nanna has been PI, co-PI and member of several ongoing and recently finished research projects funded by European Research Council, Independent Research Fund Denmark, Velux Foundation and Innovation Fund Denmark, including AI REUSE, Follow Me (FoMe), Personalized Intelligence in News, and Datafied Living.

Keywords: critical data studies, critical machine learning and AI studies, digital infrastructures, archives, STS, critical digital humanities, and cultural theory.