Abstract: Digital identity data in the public sector do more than merely organise populations. They actively shape social reality, influencing how people are known, governed, and understood. This lecture traces how seemingly minor changes to identity categories can produce wide-reaching effects as they ripple through the digital public infrastructures, reshaping eligibility, access, and the delivery of health and welfare services. Drawing on infrastructure theory and an empirical case of state-driven gender recategorization, it shows how human identity categories become consequential through their entanglement with digital systems. The lecture argues that modifying digital identity systems in response to social and political change requires sustained attention to infrastructural design. Without this, there is a risk of reproducing harm through the very systems meant to support all citizens.
We are delighted to invite you to an online seminar on March 11th, at 12:00 UK time, with Dr Katherine Wyers on ‘Digital Public Infrastructures and the State Recategorization of Human Identity Categories’.
The seminar is provided by the UKAIS in collaboration with the AIS Women’s Network College.
The event will take place via Microsoft Teams:
Bio: Dr. Katherine Wyers is a researcher and practitioner in digital public infrastructures. She combines software engineering experience from refugee health and education projects with research on digital identity data and how government classifications shape health and welfare programs. She earned her PhD in Informatics from the University of Oslo, studying state-driven gender recategorization in digital identity systems through ethnographic research with transgender and gender-diverse people in North India.