Tahani Nadim studied art history at Camberwell College of Arts and has a PhD in sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has worked as a programme manager for the Women’s Art Library in London, an editor for an arts and architecture press and as a researcher at Goldsmiths Library setting up the institutional repository and Open Access strategy.
Her research is concerned with the structures and infrastructures of data collections and attendant practices. It is dedicated to establishing and maintaining productive conversations across disciplines, institutions and ways of knowing. In 2015 she produced the exhibition “Tote Wespen fliegen länger” (Dead wasps fly further) at the MfN together with the visual artist Åsa Sonjasdotter and founded the slightly clandestine Bureau for troubles (ongoing). In 2018 she co-curated the exhibition “The Influencing Machine”, which examined political bots and the automation of politics, at the nGbK in Berlin.
Her current research focus is on “Data natures” and involves interdisciplinary inquiries into the data practices of natural history collections. These include, but are not limited to, various digitisation efforts as well as data-centred citizen science activities. The research aims to problematize the nature of data and their participation in making certain versions of nature, nation and society viable and doable.
Publications
Tahani Nadim, “All the Data Creatures,” in Bioinformation Worlds and Futures, ed. E. J. Gonzalez-Polledo and Silvia Posocco (New York: Routledge, 2022).
Tahani Nadim, “The Datafication of Nature: Data Formations and New Scales in Natural History,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (April 2021), 62–75, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9...
Tahani Nadim, “Database,” in Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data, ed. Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio and Christina Veel (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021), 125–32.
Tahani Nadim, “Haunting Seedy Connections,” in Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, ed. Celia Lury, Rachel Fensham, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Sybille Lammes, Angela Last, Mike Michael and Emma Uprichard (New York: Routledge, 2018), 239–247.
The Influencing Machine, ed. Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (Berlin: Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, 2018).