Rahul Bhargava, Director of the Data Culture Group and Assistant Professor in Journalism and Art + Design at Northeastern University
Join the event on YouTube Live, Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 5:30 PM EST:
About the Event
Data is now commonly used in community organizing, civic governance, newsrooms, and museums, but our tools have changed little. We’re stuck with surveys, spreadsheets, and charts designed for corporate boardrooms, approaches that weren’t designed for participation and empowerment. This talk will introduce various provocations that Rahul Bhargava has created over the last 15 years to push back on this disconnect. These include participatory data murals, playful museum exhibits, educational experiences for learners, data tools aids for journalists, interrogations of bias in AI, and collaboratively created machine learning models for human rights defenders. These all serve as examples of a creative approach to civic data design, creating digital and off-screen approaches that help communities to tell their own data stories.
For more information, contact: Digital Media & Design Department at meredith.friedman@uconn.edu