Rahul Bhargava is an professor, researcher, designer, and facilitator who works on data storytelling and technology design in support of social justice and community empowerment. He has created big data research tools to investigate media attention, built hands-on interactive museum exhibits that delight learners of all ages, and run over 100 workshops to build data culture in newsrooms, non-profits, and libraries. Rahul has collaborated with a wide range of groups, from the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil to the St. Paul library system and the World Food Program. His academic work on data literacy, technology, and civic media has been published in journals such as the International Journal of Communication, the Journal of Community Informatics, and Digital Humanities Quarterly. His museum installations have appeared at the Boston Museum of Science, Eyebeam in New York City, and the Tech Interactive in San Jose. Rahul has led workshops and made presentations at meetings such as Data for Black Lives, the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, IIIT New Delhi, the United Nations World Data Forum, TICTeC and the Designing Interactive Systems conference.
Rahul is a Principal at Connection Lab, and also an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Art + Design at Northeastern University. Rahul leads Data Culture Group there. The Data Culture Group builds collaborative projects to interrogate our datafied society with a focus on rethinking participation and power in data processes.
Email: rahul@connectionlab.org
Websites: rahulbotics.com, dataculturegroup.org, connectionlab.org
Twitter: @rahulbot
Publications: Google Scholar
Open Source Software: https://github.com/rahulbot
Speaking
Rahul is available for booking to speak on the topics of data literacy, data storytelling, civic technology, algorithmic bias, and more. Some past engagements:
- Responsible Computing: New Approaches to Impactful Technology. Invited talk at IIIT in New Delhi, India. (Aug 2019)
- Creative Data Literacy. Workshop at the Next Library Conference in Aarhus, Denmark. (Jun 2019)
- Right Question + Right Data = Right Action. Invited talk at the Asian Women for Health Conference in Boston, MA. (May 2019)
- Is Your Data Undermining Your Mission. Keynote at the SSIR Data on Purpose Conference in Palo Alto, CA. (Feb 2019)
- Teaching Data that Matters. Panel speaker at the National Academies – Data Science Education Roundtable in Washington, DC. (Nov 2018)
- Empowering People to Speak Data. Workshop at the United Nations World Data Forum in Dubai, UAE. (Oct 2018)
