Convened by Moisés Kopper and  Daniela Linkevicius de Andrade, Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp

Data has become critical to shaping governance, participation, and development. Globally, questions of who produces data, how it circulates, and whose knowledge counts are deeply entangled with struggles over representation, accountability, and social justice. As predictive technologies and digital infrastructures reconfigure the space of official and grassroots numbers, datafication redistributes power and resources while transforming imaginaries of citizenship, mobility, and development futures.

In close dialogue with the Data in Practice seed panel, which experiments with situated forms of local data production, this harvest panel turns a wider lens on how such practices intersect with larger data regimes. We invite contributions that trace the triangulation of actors and institutions, informational flows, and contested futures of (digital) development, examining how governments, corporations, international organizations, and local communities interact within emerging data ecosystems. The panel seeks to connect innovations in citizen science and community data with critical analyses of how official statistics, infrastructures, and predictive models shape and are shaped by those practices.

We particularly welcome work that probes the intersections and tensions between top-down and bottom-up quantification regimes, including digital activism and grassroots knowledge practices. Contributions may address how numbers are produced, circulated, appropriated, and standardized; how modeling, metrics, and predictive systems reshape lived realities, collective imaginaries, and demographic futures; and how they give rise to new forms of governance, inequality, and resistance.

Methodological reflections are also central. How can the multidimensionality of data be studied across scales? What innovative approaches might bridge official and grassroots perspectives and grasp their human and non-human ramifications?

By convening diverse methods and disciplines, this panel advances dialogue on the possibilities and limits of datafication in shaping citizenship, migration, governance, knowledge, and alternative development futures. Alongside the seed panel, it offers spaces of exchange—connecting local data production and experimentation with broader critiques of data regimes.

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