The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest invites you to a book launch and panel discussion on Unsettling Data: Mapping Labour and Land against the Representationalist Legal Form (TITiPI, 2026) with Cristina Cochior (Varia and FHNW, Basel), Angela Daly (University of Newscastle, AU/University of Dundee), Ozan Kamiloglu (London South Bank University), Usha Raman (University of Hyderabad), Nayantara Ranganathan (Independent), Joris van Hoboken (University of Amsterdam) , and author response by Dilan Dagaz.  Join us for an insightful discussion about data, law, and reality-bending. We shall unpack the role that the grammar or aesthetics of law and data play in exploiting and obscuring the realities of human and unhuman agencies that animate the digital Earth. What does it all mean for justice today? 

The book is available to download open access under a Migrantifa Commons BY-NC license.

When: 09 June 2026, 1000h-1130h BST

Venue: Online/Big Blue Button, please register to join

Registration link: 

https://framaforms.org/register-unsettling-data-book-launch-1779195057

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. 

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.