Ali Karimi

Ali Karimi

PhD

Positions

Assistant Professor

Faculty of Arts, Department of Communication, Media and Film

Contact information

Email

ali.karimi1@ucalgary.ca

Location

Department of Communication, Media and Film: Social Sciences 218

Background

Biography

Ali Karimi is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary. He is a scholar of critical information studies with a focus on surveillance, privacy, and data justice. 

Karimi’s current research examines the power politics of how the state produces, organizes, and uses population information. He studies this problem mostly in the context of the weak states of the Global South where data is often contested and information injustice is a major issue—a problem that particularly hurts marginalized groups. 

He is currently working on a book about the history of counting in Afghanistan. The book shows how numerical information—or lack thereof—can affect the state, society, and the market at large. Grounded in the intersection of media studies and STS, this project is based on unexamined archival sources from Afghanistan and several other countries and ethnographic fieldwork.

Karimi received his PhD from McGill University, where his research was supported by a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Before joining the University of Calgary, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Advanced Research in Global Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Publications