Biography

Dr. Jonathan W. Y. Gray is Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London (KCL) where he is currently writing a book on Data Worlds: Open Data and the Politics of Public Information in the Digital Age. This includes drawing on approaches from Science and Technology Studies, the History and Philosophy of Science and New Media Studies to explore the ideals, imaginaries, epistemologies, practices, methods and technologies associated with open data, data journalism, data activism and transparency after the “digital turn”. His research has been published in journals such as Big Data and Society; New Media and Society; Information, Communication & Society; Statistique et Société and Digital Journalism. At KCL he teaches on the politics of data, critical data practice, digital methods and data journalism.

He is also Co-Founder of the Public Data Lab; Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam; Research Associate at the médialab at Sciences Po (founded by Bruno Latour); and Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University. Previously he was Prize Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath, a Postdoctoral Researcher on the European Research Council funded DATACTIVE project at the University of Amsterdam. He previously studied Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, Social Sciences at the Open University and completed his PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London.

In addition to his academic work, Jonathan has a professional background in the civil society sector, public policy and data journalism, and in this capacity has founded and co-founded numerous initiatives, including the Data Journalism Handbook, Europe’s Energy, Open Data for Tax Justice, OpenSpending, Open Trials, The Public Domain Review and Where Does My Money Go?. He is Senior Advisor at the global civil society organisation Open Knowledge International and on the Advisory Board of the LSE Impact Blog at the London School of Economics and Political Science and of the Fair Tax Mark, a non-profit initiative dedicated to promoting tax transparency and fairness. He is also on the steering committee for MediArXiv, an open access archive for research in media, film, and communication studies.

He is a regular contributor to The Guardian and Open Democracy and has been interviewed by numerous publications and media organisations about his work, including La Repubblica (Italy), O’Reilly Radar (US), OpenSource.com (US), PopTech (US), The European Journalism Centre (Netherlands), The Guardian (UK – see also here), Times Higher Education (UK), Todo Noticias (Argentina) and Zeit Online (Germany). He can be found on Twitter at @jwyg.