Professor Anne Beaulieu holds the Aletta Jacobs Chair of Knowledge Infrastructures for Sustainability at Campus Fryslân and is Director of the Data Research Centre, University of Groningen. At present, Beaulieu’s main topics of research are infrastructures for assessing progress on the SDGs and for ecological monitoring. Knowledge infrastructures are essential to how we define and establish urgency around issues like climate change or loss of biodiversity, and they are also key to monitoring our progress in addressing these issues.
In this work, pursued with Selen Eren at Campus Fryslan and in collaboration with the team of Theunis Piersma of the University of Groningen, Beaulieu examines how different actors use the interfaces to such infrastructures to know and intervene responsibly.
At the heart of this research are questions about how values and practices are reinforced by current knowledge infrastructures, which adaptations are needed to develop more responsible and sustainable practices based on knowledge and how to make complex, multi-dimensional data tractable. The aim is better knowledge infrastructures, better in the sense that they bring issues of intention, responsibility and accountability to the forefront and that they garner sufficient trust and reliability to enable us to act.
In related projects with Clarisse Kraamwinkel and Ruth Howison, we are developing expertise on Responsible Knowledge Infrastructures for Climate Adaptation, focusing on climate resilience of soils in Friesland. Together with Taylor Craft and Ruth Howison, we are exploring how to assess agricultural sustainability by integrating remote sensing and animal ecology with agricultural practices.
Beaulieu recently developed the minor programme Data Wise: Data Science in Society with Gert Stulp. Beaulieu’s research focuses on diversity and complexity in knowledge infrastructures, with particular attention to digital data assemblages and interfaces for the creation and circulation of knowledge. She is co-author of three books on knowledge and technology (see Books page) and has published widely the significance of ethnographic methods for the study of data practices.