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Roopika Risam

@roopikarisam.bsky.social

8K followers 1.9K following 4.2K posts

Chair of Film & Media Studies, equestrian🐴, author of DATA EMPIRE (Harper & Torva, July 2026) https://roopikarisam.com

Roopika Risam is an associate professor of film and media studies and of comparative literature and faculty in the Digital Humanities and Social Engagement cluster at Dartmouth College. She was formerly Chair of the Department of Secondary and Higher Education and Associate Professor of Education at Salem State University. She is a scholar of digital and postcolonial humanities. .. more

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 18d

It's UK official! DATA EMPIRE, coming July 9, 2026 🤩

Front page of the bookseller with four author photos and announcements. Mine says "Torva wins seven-way auction for 'breathtakingly ambitious' human history of data"

Torva, an imprint of Transworld, has signed the first trade book by Roopika
Risam, associate professor of digital humanities at Dartmouth, in a seven-
way auction.
Publishing director Alex Christofi acquired UK and Commonwealth rights
to Data Empire: A Human History of Records and Rule from Emma Bal at
Madeleine Milburn. North American rights were pre-empted for six figures
by Sarah Haugen at Harper.
Recommended by the publisher for readers of Nexus and The Age of
Surveillance Capitalism, Data Empire shows how data gathering has been
"fundamental" to the human species' success, driving advancements
throughout history as well as enabling the exercise of power.
The blurb states: "From ancient cave markings and knotted strings to
colonial censuses and modern surveillance, data has always been used to
shape civilisations, uphold empires and control lives. The story of empire is
the story of data - and knowing this history is the first step to breaking its
grip on the future."
Christofi said: "It is breathtakingly ambitious to read data back into the
whole span of human history, from the first clay tokens to the era of
surveillance drones - but it becomes impossible to unsee. Professor Risam
has written a paradigm-shifting book that is going to change how we
understand the struggle to keep control of our own data in the present."

Risam's academic research explores how histories of race, empire and
technology shape the modern world. She is the author of New Digital Worlds,
taught in over 150 universities worldwide, and past president of the
Association for Computers and the Humanities.

"I'm fortunate to be working with Sarah Haugen at Harper and Alex Christofi
at Torva, who understand the urgency and scale of this project and have
shaped it with shared editorial vision, and with Emma Bal at the Madeleine
Milburn Agency, who challenged me to think more daringly about what this
book could be."
Torva will publish Data Empire in hardback and trade paperback on 9th July
2026.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1h

Thank you @adamlinson.bsky.social for hooking me up with the last PDF I need for my promotion dossier. Could cry with relief.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3h

It is totally bizarre to have to do a table of contents for my Interfolio promotion dossier when my CV is already there and all the contents are divided up and listed in the same order as my CV. 😵‍💫

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 21h

I think you hit the nail on the head with the problem. There is only one mention of horses in the whole dossier. And that only because in a co-authored and peer-reviewed article we have a sentence like “we are professors, librarians, instructional technologists, sewists, horsegirls…”

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 22h

And now we are at the "what even is scholarship?" portion of the promotion dossier journey. 🤦‍♀️

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 23h

Am currently embodying “a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part,” only I am the first part and work with kind people that they aren’t being the second part.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

No one can say I don't take feedback.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

My beloved: Something is going wrong in Roopsi Land
Roopsi: Was I making a face?
My beloved: No, your sigh quotient is OFF THE CHARTS.
Roopsi: Sigh.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

Ah, now we have circled back to the “made bad life choices, should have been a normal humanities scholar” phase of promotion dossier assembly.

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Reposted by Roopika Risam

Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 1d

Bloomberg bubble charts the Bubble:

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

My impulse to phase a project like there wouldn't be grant funding was good, but I didn't imagine that the federal funder for my field would cease to exist or my work would be *unfundable.* It's sad—future plans would have impact for the project and for the field through the tools they'd require.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 2d

I need this day of manual barn labor with friends after the total nonsense that has occupied this week.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 2d

Man, Nobel Prize day is just not as fun when my perennial preferences not-Philip Roth and Ngugi are no longer with us.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 2d

Me finding out just how many books never sent me my complimentary copy and realizing I have to ILL five of my own publications.

a cartoon character is sitting in a wooden box with a sticker that says ' disney ' on it

Alt: a cartoon character is sitting in a wooden box with a sticker that says ' disney ' on it

media.tenor.com

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 2d

We did not. This *felt* over the top even if factual.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 2d

It truly is. 🤢

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 2d

I am finished with my promotion narrative. And I really hope I get promoted just so I never have to write anything like this ever again.

"Since tenure, my work has reshaped digital and public humanities. I have produced influential scholarship, built infrastructures for research and teaching, and fostered equity-driven collaboration across institutions and publics. Therefore, I am poised to continue advancing the humanities in field-defining and publicly vital ways in the next phase of my career."

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3d

Yes, Interfolio, I KNOW my promotion dossier is due in 7 days, thanks for that. Today I will finish writing my narrative and uploading my documents so I can spend the rest of the next week tweaking two digital humanities projects going in.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3d

You have not lived until you have had to sit next to a friend looking at one of her projects while pretending to be writing code for it but are really just commenting last night’s code for your own project and none of it matters because the donors aren’t gonna know.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

Had to be in a promotional video for advancement and it was *hilarious* and I could barely keep a straight face.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3d

Same

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

Thank you!

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

Had to be in a promotional video for advancement and it was *hilarious* and I could barely keep a straight face.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

Yeah, still so much work to do

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

A luminary of the field observed to me last week that I was recently part of the rising generation, but had risen, so hopefully that suffices.

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

For sure. there is no room to substantively give anything more than a sentence

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

We have folks who do creative practice so it’s a little different, but I guess I am testing the theory of whether digital projects are good enough.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

Ours is five single spaced pages, four for research and one to cover teaching and service, it’s not enough!

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

Snap, you just wrote my future research directions paragraph

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

“More recently, 3,000 limited login emails in 24 hours regarding hacking attempts indicate…”

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

“Definitely made an impact on the right wing, as seen in 3 hit pieces and 3 200K+ tweet troll storms.”

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 4d

This is why people should behave themselves in their disciplines and not do rouge things like not have their second book out yet and hope that 47 articles/chapters will be an acceptable substitute because is DH a book field really?

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