11/06 12pm-2pm: Law, Technology, and Development Book Discussion: Unsettling Data by Dilan Dagaz

Law Marketing Resource — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 23:56:03 GMT

When: 12pm - 2pm, Thu, 11 Jun '26

Where: S.2.09, Warwick Law School, Social Sciences Building

About the Book:

What prevents data governance law from redressing the widespread exploitation of labour and land rampant across the data economies of our digital Earth? Unsettling Data answers this question by scrutinising the legal grammar of ‘data’ to expose the persistence of hierarchical power relations between the observer and the observed. The role of the modern legal form in fortifying and obscuring these power relations is elucidated. Proposing representationalism as the framework to map these hidden yet pervasive power relations, the book reveals how the representationalist legal form serves to delink the agency of the data subject from unjust labour and land exploitation in the digital political economy. Highlighting the importance of Indigenous/Adivasi perspectives for unsettling the philosophical core of Western(ised) data governance, Unsettling Data argues for the formal reconceptualisation of data as the entangled human and unhuman agencies implicated in its production; paving the way for a new legal grammar of data rooted in relational reciprocity.

Unsettling Data will be of interest to readers in critical legal theory, law and humanities, law and political economy, data protection, information law, AI governance, intellectual property as well as anyone seeking to understand the legal form or aesthetics of data from a critical lens. It is available to download open access under a Migrantifa Commons BY-NC license.

About the Author:

Dilan Dagaz is an unsettling witch and queer mystic with research interests at the intersection of magic, law, science, and the nature of reality. He has previously served as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter and holds a PhD in Legal Sciences summa cum laude from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Having worked under different names with the civil society and academia across India, Germany, and UK, Dilan holds significant international experience of policy advocacy, research communication, teaching and organising on issues of digital rights, net neutrality, media law, algorithmic regulation, data governance, and intellectual property.

About the Learning Circle:

The Law, Technology, and Development Learning Circle brings together staff and students across the ��ӰƬ who are interested in the regulatory, governance, human rights, and political economy challenges of technology in/and on society. The group is coordinated by the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE), Warwick Law School and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) with the aim to create a space for sharing and discussing research and policy developments.

Through reading groups, events, and policy conversations the group aims to develop cross faculty collaborations that foreground Warwick’s law in context, and interdisciplinary research culture.

For more information on the group, please contact: Dr Siddharth De Souza (Siddharth.De-Souza@warwick.ac.uk) or Dr Serena Natile (Serena.Natile@warwick.ac.uk).

For logistical information about the events, please contact globe@warwick.ac.uk

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11/06 12pm-2pm: Law, Technology, and Development Book Discussion: Unsettling Data by Dilan Dagaz