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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

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 15d

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 · 6h

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 · 16h

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 · 1d

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 · 18h

Same

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you!

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 1d

Yeah, still so much work to do

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 1d

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

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

Snap, you just wrote my future research directions paragraph

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

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

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

“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 · 1d

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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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

“My demonstration of Hegel with My Little Ponies was noted as ‘iconic’ in student evaluations.”

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

Solidarity friend!!!! We have done good work together and you do amazing things 💕

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

Ah yes, have reached the "if this isn't enough to get me promoted, nothing is" phase of promotion narrative writing.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

You are making me feel better about my unease about the book actually because I definitely take the more STS data is a social construct and the data/info/knowledge triad ignores that position and worry it will Make People MadTM (even though it's just so obvious to us....)

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you for this brief distraction from fretting over minute phrases in my promotion narrative at 6am <3

Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

But then again, there is also the fact that resistance also requires having to talk about it in (for want of a better word) colonial terms and to use the word data to legibly demand sovereignty.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

For me, it's sort of about how the people it belongs to (truly), who are affected/impacted by it talk about it - if that makes sense. That feels to me like the only authentic way to honor what it is in a particular cultural/community context.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

As if “human cognition” is itself a thing…. *turns off Bluesky before everyone in the world gets mad at me*

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

I think the data/info/knowledge hierarchy is another example of US/European epistemology masquerading as universal (and presentist!), a sociotechnical concept that helps people make machines do things but gets uncritically applied as if it were a fact of human cognition.

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

Having absolutely no time due to my promotion deadline I offer this and also that the typical CS data/info divide doesn’t take into account Gitelman’s point re: data never being raw. I favor more of a definition like rendering observed phenomena in symbols and also slippage between data and info. +

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 1d

You know if I did it something would go wrong and I’d have a dead URL and would end up with the reviewer who decides they need to do the review the minute they get the dossier 😂