Data In Society, Not Data As Society: A Conversation with Dr. Safiya Noble
- Annenberg School for Communication, Room 500
Join us for the 2026 Transit Talk hosted jointly by Villanova University, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania
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About the Event:
The Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society's Spring 2026 Transit Talks Welcomes Author and Professor Safiya Noble, PhD.
The WFI Transit Talks is our marquis collaborative lecture series with Temple University and The University of Pennsylvania bringing visiting scholars and game changers to campus each year. These lectures engage new conversations about the importance of communication, social change and social justice.
Her talk will be moderated by doctoral student, Cienna Davis, and Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Julian Quiros, Ph.D., and is called "Data In Society, Not Data As Society: A Conversation with Dr. Safiya Noble."
A master class will be given by Dr. Noble at the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 (location and time TBA).
Transit Talks are co-sponsored by The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Temple University’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication.
About the Talk:
The landscape of information is rapidly shifting as new imperatives and demands push to the fore increasing investment in digital technologies. Yet, critical information scholars continue to demonstrate how digital technology and its narratives are shaped by and infused with values that are not impartial. Technologies consist of a set of social practices, situated within the dynamics of race, gender, class, and politics, and in the service of something -- a position, a profit motive, a means to an end. In this conversation, Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble will discuss her book, Algorithms of Oppression, and delve into issues ranging from marginalization and misrepresentation in commercial information platforms like Google search, to the profound power struggles that violate civil, human, and collective rights through AI and machine learning projects.
About the Speakers:
This year's Transit Talk will be a Fireside Chat featuring Dr. Safiya Noble. The conversation will be moderated by Annenberg Doctoral Student Cienna Davis and Annenberg Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow Julian Quiros.
Dr. Safiya U. Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice and Co-Director of the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at UCLA. She currently serves as a Director of the UCLA DataX Initiative, leading work in critical data studies for the campus.
Professor Noble is the author of the best-selling book on algorithmic harm in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination.
Dr. Noble is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment, and provides expertise to a number of civil and human rights organizations. She is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is a chartering member of the International Panel on the Information Environment. In 2022, she was recognized as the inaugural NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award recipient.
Her academic research focuses on the internet and its impact on society. She is regularly sought out for her expertise on issues of algorithmic discrimination and technology bias by national and international press including Rolling Stone, The Guardian, the BBC, CNN International, USA Today, Wired, Time, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The New York Times, and a host of network news and podcasts. Her popular writing includes critiques on the loss of public goods to Big Tech companies, as featured in Noema magazine.
She is a member of several academic journal and advisory boards, and holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a B.A. in Sociology from California State University, Fresno where she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award for 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumna Award from the iSchool Alumni Association, and is also the inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Award winner from the Illinois Alumni Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the recipient of a Hellman Fellowship and the UCLA Early Career Award.
-Light refreshments will be served for attendees-
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