Alexander Campolo

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I am a postdoctoral researcher on the Algorithmic Socities Project in the Department of Geography at Durham University. Here is my most recent CV. You can contact me at alexander.campolo@durham.ac.uk

My research and teaching span the history of media, science, and technology from the twentieth century to the present. I focus on the ways that data technologies transform how we know and govern ourselves. I am currently working on topics related to machine learning and social theory, drawing on the history of statistics and probability. I am also working on a book on the history of data visualization.

I was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Media, Culture & Communication at New York University, where I was also a researcher at the AI Now Institute.

Publications

"From Rules to Examples: Machine Learning's Type of Authority" with Katia Schwerzmann Big Data & Society (2023)

"Machine Learning, Meaning Making: On Reading Computer Science Texts" with Louise Amoore, Benjamin Jacobsen, and Ludovico Rella Big Data & Society (2023)

"Thinking, Judging, Noticing, Feeling: John W. Tukey Against the Mechanization of Inferential Knowledge" Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge (2021)

"Flattening the Curve: Visualization and Pandemic Knowledge" Formations (2020)

"Signs and Sight: Jacques Bertin and the Visual Language of Structuralism" Grey Room (2020)

"Enchanted Determinism: Power without Control in Artificial Intelligence" with Kate Crawford, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (2020)

Translation of "Structure in Modern French Philosophy" by Patrice Maniglier in The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Modern Philosophy (forthcoming 2024)

"AI Now 2017 Report", with Madelyn Sanfilippo, Meredith Whittaker, and Kate Crawford (2017)

Translation of "General Introduction to Nietzsche's Complete Works" by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze Nietzsche 13/13 (2016)

"The Critical Attitude" Foucault 13/13 (2016)