Jean-Christophe Plantin

Dr Plantin will be on sabbatical leave during Michaelmas Term 2021.

Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His research investigates the increasingly infrastructural role that digital platforms play in society.

In his first book, Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography, (Wiley, 2014) he detailed the use of web-based mapping platforms by non-experts to participate in socio-technical debates, focusing on radiation mapping initiatives after March 11th 2011 in Fukushima, Japan. Following his postdoctoral research, he studied invisible labor in knowledge infrastructures, such as processing work in data archives, and the platformization of research data repositories. He is currently writing a monograph on how large tech companies shape our global communication infrastructure (through projects such as data centers, satellites, or undersea cables). He is also co-editing the SAGE Handbook for Data & Society (with Amelia Acker, Tommaso Venturini, and Antonia Walford).

Before joining the Department in 2015, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan (Department of Communication & School of Information). He holds a PhD in Communication & Information Studies from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, and MAs from the Université Paris 8, France, and from the European Graduate School, Switzerland. He has held Visiting Fellowships at Northwestern University, Fudan University, Sciences Po, and Microsoft Research New England (Social Media Collective).

His work has been published in leading Media & Communications and Science & Technology Studies journals, including Media, Culture & Society, New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Chinese Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, European Journal of Communication, and Sciences, Technology & Human Values. His research has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the European Regional Development Fund, LSE and the University of Michigan.

Expertise Details

• Politics of Platforms; Data and Knowledge; Media Infrastructures

Languages

• English, French, German

Education

• Doctorat Université de Technologie de Compiègne (UTC) (2009 — 2012)
• Young Leader Summer Program Tsinghua University (2017 — 2017)
• Graduate Certificate Universiteit van Amsterdam (2011 — 2011)
• Master 2 Recherche Université Paris 8 (2008 — 2009)
• Master of Arts The European Graduate School (2006 — 2009)
• Licence Université du Québec à Montréal (2005 — 2006)

Research interests

Politics of Platforms: platforms and public participation, platforms in China, mapping platforms, data sharing platforms

Data and Knowledge: open data, data sharing, big data and scholarship, data labor

Media Infrastructures: networking infrastructure, open compute, platform model applied to infrastructure.