Data Worlds and Futures: Archives, Bioinformation and Evidence (360G-Wellcome-213256_Z_18_Z)

As body fragments, tissue samples and DNA sequences are progressively transformed into highly mobile and replicable data, bioinformation raises urgent questions about the entanglement of (life and) death with the materialities and mechanisms of data worlds. This project explores the relation between bioinformation, infrastructures and evidence in relation to forensic archival practices and data processing. It examines the social lives of data through practitioners’ day-to-day activities, social practices of collection, storage and use through associations that privilege particular data types and configurations. An integrated programme of activities will: 1) establish a research network of bioinformation scholars; 2) engage forensic specialists and data scientists in two collaborative workshops to explore the digitisation and storage of biomaterials and the algorithmic applications used to interpret data and produce evidence; 3) produce exploratory empirical research at a forensic services provider and repository, as a background case study to analyse digitisation and data processing in forensic research and forensic service provision. This project will open up major areas of enquiry that will improve public understandings of evidence intersecting forensic science, genetic profiling, and algorithmic processing. It will foster new avenues in bioinformation research, data policy and algorithmic governance in the field of health and wellbeing.