Dissertation Presentation – Democratic Experiments with Technology

In person or virtual through Zoom

Friday, October 3, 2025 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM EDT
Fuse at Mason Square, 6302

This Friday, 3rd October, the Center for Social Science Research’s Movement Engaged Hub is hosting a dissertation discussion. Dr John Dale will be speaking to Dhruv Deepak about “Democratic Experiments with Technology,” a major theme from his ongoing dissertation research.

Dhruv is a PhD candidate in Sociology at George Mason University. He studies the community-led stewardship of digital resources — data, platforms, and infrastructures. His analysis focuses on digital cooperatives, data sovereignty initiatives, and peer production systems, to understand how they transform extractive “data relations” into sources of community strength. Alongside the dissertation, he leads George Mason’s Digital Commonwealth Project: an engaged research initiative that designs accountable digital infrastructure to empower communities.

The dissertation examines how rules, architectures, and incentives in the digital economy shape power and public outcomes. Central to his research is the idea that we are not confined to existing paradigms: economics of data extraction, markets, digital surveillance and platform capitalism. Instead, Dhruv proposes that through democratic experiments, we can transform our relationship with technology.