Jennifer Pybus
Associate Professor
Canada Research Chair in Data, Democracy and AI
Ext: 33608
Email: jpybus@yorku.ca
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Accepting New Graduate Students
Jennifer Pybus is a Canada Research Chair in Politics, Data and Artificial Intelligence at York University. Her research examines how the rapid expansion of AI systems is transforming the governance of data, with a particular focus on how intimate forms of personal data are captured and mobilised within contemporary digital economies. The focus of her work is centred on the political and economic infrastructures that underpin AI, analysing how everyday practices, such as tracking health, reproduction, and care, are embedded within systems designed to continuously extract and operationalise data. She conceptualises this as a form of surveillance and extraction as a strategic resource for AI-driven value creation.
Her empirical research explores how these dynamics reconfigure power relations between citizens, corporations, and the state, while often reproducing existing inequalities, particularly those related to gender. She also develops participatory and methodological approaches, such socio-technical auditing to make these data practices visible and to support more equitable and accountable forms of data governance.
Dr. Jennifer Pybus completed her PhD in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in 2013 and has since become an internationally recognised scholar working at the intersection of political science, digital culture, and critical data studies. Her research examines how digital and AI-driven systems capture and process personal data, with a particular focus on how everyday practices are transformed into economic and political value.
Beginning with her MA and PhD, Dr. Pybus explored how young people’s participation in social media platforms contributed to emerging data-driven economies. Her early work traced the tension between networked sociality and the monetisation of user activity, resulting in widely cited publications on immaterial labour, affect, and digital culture.
Before joining York University, she was a Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London, where her research expanded to examine the infrastructures underpinning mobile platforms and the systems enabling large-scale data capture, profiling, and algorithmic decision-making. Her work contributes to the study of datafication, a process that renders social and cultural life into actionable data for AI systems.
Dr. Pybus has led major internationally funded projects, including Our Data Ourselves and Zones of Data Translation, which developed participatory tools and workshops to enhance public understanding of data practices. Her recent SSHRC-funded research advances this work by examining female technologies, misinformation, and intersectional harms, alongside developing data literacy initiatives, conducting audits of mobile applications, and mapping the infrastructures through which personal data flows across global systems.
She is currently a Canada Research Chair in Politics, Data and Artificial Intelligence at York University, where she leads an internationally connected research program on the governance of AI and data, developing innovative and participatory approaches to support critical data literacy and more equitable forms of data governance.
Degrees
PhD, McMaster UniversityMA, McMaster University
BA, Simon Fraser University
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
A collaboration with UK based artist Liz Hingley, selected as an artist in residence at Somerset House at King's College London.
Description:The project extends Hingley's work on the mobile phone SIM card, a key to unlocking local networks, by allowing refugees to create a sense of security, identity and home in a new place. Her work visualises the archive of photographic memories they embody, linking past and present (https://www.lizhingley.com/elalmadinah).
Start Date:
- Month: Nov Year: 2020
End Date:
- Month: May Year: 2022
Collaborator: Liz Hingley
Funders:
King's College London
-
Summary:
This interdisciplinary collaboration brought together our research in mobile tool development and critical data literacies, alongside the Tactical Tech Collective. The aim was to empower data publics by asking the following questions:
1. How is Tactical Tech mobilising the workshop as an interdisciplinary tool to study the material environment of social big data? How can this then be harnessed by humanities researchers for greater impact and engagement?
2. How can we leverage the results of previous research to engage new audiences beyond the classroom and the academic workshop?
3. How can the methodology inform the development of new collaborative spaces to facilitate innovative humanities research that can engage the general public, augmenting knowledge exchanges between experts and non-experts?
Start Date:
- Month: Jun Year: 2018
End Date:
- Month: Nov Year: 2019
Collaborator: Mark Coté and Tobias Blanke
Collaborator Institution: King's College London
Collaborator Role: Co-Investigators
Funders:
Arts and Humanities Research Council
-
Summary:
The Our Data Ourselves project examined ways of understanding and reclaiming the data that young people produce on smartphone devices. More specifically, it explored the growing usage and centrality of mobiles in the lives of young people between the ages of 14 and 18 years old, questioning what data-making possibilities exist if users can either uncover and/or capture what data controllers such as Facebook monetize and share about themselves with third-parties. We therefore designed MobileMiner, an app we created to consider how gaining access to one’s own data not only augments the agency of the individual but of the collective user. Finally, we explored the data productions from everyday use of mobiles during two hackathons that we held.
Start Date:
- Month: Oct Year: 2013
End Date:
- Month: Dec Year: 2015
Collaborator: Tobias Blanke
Collaborator Institution: University of Amsterdam
Collaborator Role: Primary Investigator
Funders:
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Pybus, J. (2019). Trump, the First Facebook President: Why Politicians Need Our Data Too. In Trump’s Media War (pp. 227–240). Springer International Publishing.
Pybus, J. (2015). Social Networks and their Archives of Feelings. In Hillis, K., Paasonen, S., & Petit, M. Networked Affect. MIT Press, 235-249
Coté, M. and Pybus, J. (2011). Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks, in Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labour, Peter Lang Press.
Pybus, J., & Coté, M. (2021). Did you give permission? Datafication in the mobile ecosystem. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1877771
Blanke, T., & Pybus, J. (2020). The Material Conditions of Platforms - Monopolisation through Decentralisation. Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120971632
Greenway, G., Blanke, T., Cote, M., & Pybus, J. (2017). Research on online digital cultures - community extraction and analysis by Markov and k-means clustering. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics): Vol. 10708 LNCS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71970-2_10
Coté, M., Gerbaudo, P., & Pybus, J. (2016). Introduction. Politics of Big Data. Digital Culture & Society, 2(2), 5–16. https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0202
Coté, M., & Pybus, J. (2016). Simondon on Datafication. A Techno-Cultural Method. Digital Culture & Society, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0206
Pybus, J., Coté, M., & Blanke, T. (2015). Hacking the social life of Big Data. Big Data & Society, 2(2), 205395171561664.
Blanke, T., Greenway, G., Pybus, J., & Cote, M. (2014). Mining mobile youth cultures. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), 14–17.
Pybus, J. (2011). The subjective architects: When tweens learn to immaterial labor. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 35(4).
Pybus, J. (2007). Affect and Subjectivity: A Case Study of Neopets.com, Politics and Culture, 7(2).
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2025 | GS/POLS6000 3.0 | A | M.A. Colloquium | SEMR |
Jennifer Pybus is a Canada Research Chair in Politics, Data and Artificial Intelligence at York University. Her research examines how the rapid expansion of AI systems is transforming the governance of data, with a particular focus on how intimate forms of personal data are captured and mobilised within contemporary digital economies. The focus of her work is centred on the political and economic infrastructures that underpin AI, analysing how everyday practices, such as tracking health, reproduction, and care, are embedded within systems designed to continuously extract and operationalise data. She conceptualises this as a form of surveillance and extraction as a strategic resource for AI-driven value creation.
Her empirical research explores how these dynamics reconfigure power relations between citizens, corporations, and the state, while often reproducing existing inequalities, particularly those related to gender. She also develops participatory and methodological approaches, such socio-technical auditing to make these data practices visible and to support more equitable and accountable forms of data governance.
Dr. Jennifer Pybus completed her PhD in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in 2013 and has since become an internationally recognised scholar working at the intersection of political science, digital culture, and critical data studies. Her research examines how digital and AI-driven systems capture and process personal data, with a particular focus on how everyday practices are transformed into economic and political value.
Beginning with her MA and PhD, Dr. Pybus explored how young people’s participation in social media platforms contributed to emerging data-driven economies. Her early work traced the tension between networked sociality and the monetisation of user activity, resulting in widely cited publications on immaterial labour, affect, and digital culture.
Before joining York University, she was a Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London, where her research expanded to examine the infrastructures underpinning mobile platforms and the systems enabling large-scale data capture, profiling, and algorithmic decision-making. Her work contributes to the study of datafication, a process that renders social and cultural life into actionable data for AI systems.
Dr. Pybus has led major internationally funded projects, including Our Data Ourselves and Zones of Data Translation, which developed participatory tools and workshops to enhance public understanding of data practices. Her recent SSHRC-funded research advances this work by examining female technologies, misinformation, and intersectional harms, alongside developing data literacy initiatives, conducting audits of mobile applications, and mapping the infrastructures through which personal data flows across global systems.
She is currently a Canada Research Chair in Politics, Data and Artificial Intelligence at York University, where she leads an internationally connected research program on the governance of AI and data, developing innovative and participatory approaches to support critical data literacy and more equitable forms of data governance.
Degrees
PhD, McMaster UniversityMA, McMaster University
BA, Simon Fraser University
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
A collaboration with UK based artist Liz Hingley, selected as an artist in residence at Somerset House at King's College London.
Description:The project extends Hingley's work on the mobile phone SIM card, a key to unlocking local networks, by allowing refugees to create a sense of security, identity and home in a new place. Her work visualises the archive of photographic memories they embody, linking past and present (https://www.lizhingley.com/elalmadinah).
Project Type: FundedRole: Collaborator
Start Date:
- Month: Nov Year: 2020
End Date:
- Month: May Year: 2022
Collaborator: Liz Hingley
Funders:
King's College London
-
Summary:
This interdisciplinary collaboration brought together our research in mobile tool development and critical data literacies, alongside the Tactical Tech Collective. The aim was to empower data publics by asking the following questions:
1. How is Tactical Tech mobilising the workshop as an interdisciplinary tool to study the material environment of social big data? How can this then be harnessed by humanities researchers for greater impact and engagement?
2. How can we leverage the results of previous research to engage new audiences beyond the classroom and the academic workshop?
3. How can the methodology inform the development of new collaborative spaces to facilitate innovative humanities research that can engage the general public, augmenting knowledge exchanges between experts and non-experts?
Role: Primary Investigator
Start Date:
- Month: Jun Year: 2018
End Date:
- Month: Nov Year: 2019
Collaborator: Mark Coté and Tobias Blanke
Collaborator Institution: King's College London
Collaborator Role: Co-Investigators
Funders:
Arts and Humanities Research Council
-
Summary:
The Our Data Ourselves project examined ways of understanding and reclaiming the data that young people produce on smartphone devices. More specifically, it explored the growing usage and centrality of mobiles in the lives of young people between the ages of 14 and 18 years old, questioning what data-making possibilities exist if users can either uncover and/or capture what data controllers such as Facebook monetize and share about themselves with third-parties. We therefore designed MobileMiner, an app we created to consider how gaining access to one’s own data not only augments the agency of the individual but of the collective user. Finally, we explored the data productions from everyday use of mobiles during two hackathons that we held.
Project Type: FundedRole: Research Associate
Start Date:
- Month: Oct Year: 2013
End Date:
- Month: Dec Year: 2015
Collaborator: Tobias Blanke
Collaborator Institution: University of Amsterdam
Collaborator Role: Primary Investigator
Funders:
Arts and Humanities Research Council
All Publications
Pybus, J. (2019). Trump, the First Facebook President: Why Politicians Need Our Data Too. In Trump’s Media War (pp. 227–240). Springer International Publishing.
Pybus, J. (2015). Social Networks and their Archives of Feelings. In Hillis, K., Paasonen, S., & Petit, M. Networked Affect. MIT Press, 235-249
Coté, M. and Pybus, J. (2011). Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks, in Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labour, Peter Lang Press.
Pybus, J., & Coté, M. (2021). Did you give permission? Datafication in the mobile ecosystem. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1877771
Blanke, T., & Pybus, J. (2020). The Material Conditions of Platforms - Monopolisation through Decentralisation. Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120971632
Greenway, G., Blanke, T., Cote, M., & Pybus, J. (2017). Research on online digital cultures - community extraction and analysis by Markov and k-means clustering. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics): Vol. 10708 LNCS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71970-2_10
Coté, M., Gerbaudo, P., & Pybus, J. (2016). Introduction. Politics of Big Data. Digital Culture & Society, 2(2), 5–16. https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0202
Coté, M., & Pybus, J. (2016). Simondon on Datafication. A Techno-Cultural Method. Digital Culture & Society, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0206
Pybus, J., Coté, M., & Blanke, T. (2015). Hacking the social life of Big Data. Big Data & Society, 2(2), 205395171561664.
Blanke, T., Greenway, G., Pybus, J., & Cote, M. (2014). Mining mobile youth cultures. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), 14–17.
Pybus, J. (2011). The subjective architects: When tweens learn to immaterial labor. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 35(4).
Pybus, J. (2007). Affect and Subjectivity: A Case Study of Neopets.com, Politics and Culture, 7(2).
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2025 | GS/POLS6000 3.0 | A | M.A. Colloquium | SEMR |
