Dr Alexander R. E. Taylor

I'm an anthropologist of data and communications infrastructure. I work at the intersection of critical data studies, digital anthropology, infrastructure studies and the emerging field of social studies of outer space. My research concentrates on the failure and breakdown of communications infrastructure, with a focus on the data centre industry and the space sector. I'm interested in the infrastructure, energy, and human labour that is expended on keeping communications services - especially the internet - up and running 24/7. I have conducted extensive fieldwork with data centre providers, business continuity experts, resilience and preparedness practitioners, and space sector professionals. My methods are ethnographic, media-archaeological and historical-archival.

 

I'm the Principal Investigator of the British Academy-funded project Sustainable ICTs in the Digitised University. I'm also an Editor for the Journal of Extreme Anthropology and a founding member of the Social Studies of Outer Space (SSOS) Network, a research network joining social scientists working on topics related to outer space. I’m the founder of the Cambridge Infrastructure Resilience Group, a cross-disciplinary research network that brings scholars together with industry leaders, security practitioners and policymakers to explore critical infrastructure protection in relation to emerging global catastrophic risks.

 

My work has been funded by the Royal Anthropological Institute, The Royal Geographical Society and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). I have published in journals such as The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, New Media & Society, Ephemera, Culture Machine and Roadsides, and edited collections such as the Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology and Energy Futures: Anthropocene Challenges, Emerging Technologies and Everyday Life.

 

I have also written for Failed Architecture, The Conversation and Resilience First here and here.

 

Previously, I was the Marconi Fellow in the History and Science of Wireless Communication at the University of Oxford. I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, for which I received the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Radcliffe-Brown Sutasoma Award.

 

My research interests include: data, technology, futures, outer space, techno-apocalyptic narratives, digital preservation, slow computing, digital sustainability, pre-digital nostalgia, and analogue media.