Catherine D'Ignazio

Catherine D'Ignazio is a data feminist and MIT professor whose work challenges how data systems perpetuate inequality. As director of the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT, she investigates the politics embedded in data collection, analysis, and visualization. Her signature achievement is Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), co-authored with Lauren Klein, which provides a framework for understanding data not as neutral or objective, but as a site where gender, race, and power dynamics shape what gets counted, measured, and made visible.

D'Ignazio's research focuses on documenting the hidden costs of data systems and centering marginalized perspectives in data work. Her recent book Counting Feminicide (MIT Press, 2024) examines how data infrastructure fails to capture the scale and nature of gender-based violence. She leads the Data Against Feminicide ongoing research project, which applies feminist data practices to expose gaps in how femicide is recorded and reported globally. Through the Data + Feminism Lab, she continues to develop approaches that make data work more accountable to communities most affected by data-driven decisions.

D'Ignazio offers audiences a critical lens on the relationship between data and power. Her work demonstrates that data systems are not technical problems alone but social and political ones requiring feminist analysis. She shows why understanding data as a site of inequality matters for anyone working with information, technology, or policy. Her research provides concrete tools for recognizing whose stories are told through data, whose are erased, and how we might build more just alternatives.