Research

Ongoing: “Computing the Social. Psychographics and Social Physics in the Digital Age”

This project examines the functionality and application of data processing systems deployed by the US Army during its military intervention in South Vietnam to monitor, model, and ultimately manipulate the population and its political attitudes. A part of this project entails experimenting with different approaches to analyzing historical datasets (stored in an obsolete format) and critically reconstructing and simulating historical information-processing systems. For details see: computingthesocial.net

Completed: “Villagization: A People’s History of Strategic Resettlement and Violent Transformation: Kenya and Algeria, 1952-1962”

The PhD research project examined strategic forced relocation of civilian populations during anti-guerrilla warfare as an example of late colonial population control and violent transformations. A prevalent strategy during decolonization conflicts in the 20th century, colonial regimes employed forced relocation to disrupt popular support for anti-colonial insurgents. Simultaneously, they aimed to transform enclosed settlements surrounded by barbed wire into model-villages for socio-economic development. However, for the uprooted colonized rural communities, the experiences of displacement and confinement persist as haunting and traumatic, encapsulating the domination, repression, violence, and transformative incentives of late colonialism.