Data-Pop Alliance is pleased to announce that our director Emmanuel Letouzé will be the keynote and first international speaker in the 7th edition of the Data Day to be held on October 20, 2021. This virtual event is hosted by Data You Can Use, a diverse group of local professionals who help people access data and make it useful in improving community conditions.

The theme for this year is “Slaying Dragons with Data”, which draws upon the idea that data literacy can be a fierce weapon against the social and economic problems (the dragons) we face as a society. The event seeks to stress the importance of training ourselves and our community in the language of data, and leveraging this into action. By achieving this goal the event will provide an opportunity for leaders, from neighborhoods to universities, to better understand what type of data is available, the implications this has on community revitalization, and how the connection between research and practice can be strengthen. 

Emmanuel’s presentation, titled “Data as a Language, Lens and Lever for Social Change”, will pick up from his previous publication “Beyond Data Literacy: Reinventing Community Engagement and Empowerment in the Age of Data”, in which he questions the mainstream connotation of ‘data literacy’ and poses the question of whether the current conceptualizations of it are adequate, or they put too much emphasis on technical requirements and fail to challenge deeper structural and more politically controversial issues?