Signe Sophus Lai

Signe Sophus Lai is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the Center for Tracking and Society in the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, where she studies the political economy of digital infrastructures. She co-founder of the Digital Infrastructure Think Tank, and recipient of the prestigious Tiengen Prize (2024).

Signe Sophus Lai's research is placed at the intersection between infrastructure studies, political economy of communication, and critical data studies. Her work focuses on the political and economic conditions around the digital infrastructures that larger and larger parts of our society depend on for everything from everyday communication, welfare services, and public debate. Overall, she is interested in understanding how the Internet infrastructures – from local networks to submarine fiber cables, software systems, and tracking technologies – are controlled and regulated, in Denmark and globally. Among other things, she has mapped the most important digital infrastructures, their ownership, and forms of regulation across different geopolitical contexts – from the Nordic welfare states to the regimes of Afghanistan and Myanmar. The following topics are included in this focus:

• Infrastruktural power in digital societies
• Datafication and online tracking with a specific focus on digital infrastructures, visibility, and political economies
• Digital communication systems and internet regulation
• Methodological development and digital methods in digital media and communication research
• Sociological media and communication theory

She teaches and supervises Communication and IT students at the BA and MA level in topics that include:

• Media and communication theory
• Empirical methodologies
• Digital methods
• Digital infrastructures, platforms and internet regulation
• Project management

Education

2015, Master in Film Studies, University of Copenhagen

2012, Bachelor in Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen

2011, Visiting student, Boston College

Positions

Feb. 2021, Tenure Track Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen

Feb. 2017, PhD Fellow, The Peoples' Internet, University of Copenhagen

Aug. 2015, Scientific assistant (teaching and supervision), Department of Communication, the Communication and IT programme, University of Copenhagen

Aug. 2014, Research assistant, Mediating Cultural Encounters Through European Screens (MeCETES), University of Copenhagen

Feb. 2014, Research assistant, Representations of Nordic Populism, Helsinki University

Jan. 2014, Teaching assistant, Media Sociology, Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen

Aug. 2013, Teaching assistant, Communication theory, Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen

Jan. 2012, Student Counsellor, University of Copenhagen