DataSpace Lecture Series: Representative synthetic tabular data?

Everybody is welcome!

Abstract: Synthetic data is used to assure privacy, create portable data, address data imbalances, and amplify small datasets. But what is synthetic data? What does it represent? And is this even a relevant question? In this talk, I will show you results from our experiments making synthetic tabular data, discuss our work with data repositories trying to document it, and open for a discussion on how domain experts from various fields are using it.   

Ericka Johnson is Professor of gender and society, Linköping University, Sweden and director of the Swedish national graduate school for the Wallenberg AI, autonomous systems and software program – Humanity and Society. She has an interdisciplinary background in sociology, gender studies, and science & technology studies. Johnson is the author of several monographs and anthologies, including A Cultural Biography of the Prostate (MIT Press 2021) and editor of How that Robot Made Me Feel (MIT Press 2025), and the recent Big Data & Society article (with Lee & Hajisharif) ‘The Ontological Politics of Synthetic Data’, in which she details intersectional hallucinations. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

About the DataSpace Lecture Series: The DataSpace Lecture Series is a series of lectures aiming to convene scholars and academic voices on health data, data infrastructures and related concerns about representation, power, and political economy. In the autumn semester, more lectures will follow. The series is organized by the DataSpace Research Group in collaboration with the Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies (MeST).

Find more information about DataSpace and the lecture series here.