PhD Candidate Dhruv Deepak, "Community-Owned Digital Resources: Experiments to Democratize ‘Data Relations’ for Community Wealth"

CHR Summer Doctoral Fellow Talk

Tuesday, September 16, 2025 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Horizon Hall 6325 and zoom

Dhruv Deepak (PhD Candidate, Sociology and Anthropology) is a PhD candidate in Sociology at George Mason University, exploring the intersection of technology, community, and political economy through a critical lens; he views technology as a deeply social phenomenon embedded in complex historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. Through his research, he advances a reimagined vision of technology that puts democracy and community empowerment at the center. His dissertation is an investigation of how “democratic experiments” with technology — such as digital cooperatives and peer production networks — can reconfigure extractive data relations into spaces of collective wealth and social innovation. As Project Manager of the Digital Commonwealth Project, a community-engaged research and development initiative in Northern Virginia, he demonstrates a commitment to technology that builds more resilient communities.

Project: "Community-Owned Digital Resources: Experiments to Democratize ‘Data Relations’ for Community Wealth"

My dissertation examines communities that collectively own and govern digital resources, producing alternative models that challenge power and reclaim digital space as territory for empowerment. I analyze four types of "democratic experiments" — digital cooperatives, data sovereignty initiatives, peer production networks, and participatory governance models — to investigate how community-led initiatives transform extractive data relations into spaces of collective empowerment. Early insights show they can deepen democratic practices and create community wealth; for instance, platform cooperatives reconfigure labor relations so workers retain economic value. Communities are producing terrains where they contest the dominant paradigm of extraction; this project spurs interdisciplinary dialogue on grassroots efforts to reimagine the relationship between technology and territory.