About

I’m a PhD candidate in the University of California Irvine’s Department of Anthropology . Until the end of 2023, I’m visiting scholar at the International College of Innovation , National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan.

My research and teaching focus on ways data are mobilized across scientific fields, as evidence in legal cases, and as shared points of references in social movements. I study how data practices change, the infrastructures and ideologies that shape them, and the contexts in which data gains or loses analytic and political power.

I both study and help build robust public knowledge infrastructure. Since 2020, I co-developed the Formosa Plastics Global Archive , a digital collection that supports a transnational network of people concerned about the operations of the Formosa Plastics Corporation, one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies.

My current dissertation research in the US and Taiwan is supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Google’s Environmental Data Justice Fund .

I hold a degree in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Bremen and a master’s in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from the University of Frankfurt. I’ve also got practical experience in digital media production. In 2022-23, my team won both Phases of US Environmental Protection Agency’s video competition for students with a project abou soil lead contamination in Southern California.

At UC Irvine, I’m a member the EcoGovLab and the Design Group for the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE). I further teach with colleagues at UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and serve as reviewer for journals like Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

I’m an alumn of the German-American Fulbright program and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung).

For questions and collaborations, you can reach me at tschuetz@uci.edu .