Slow Violence, Big Data & Environmental Justice

This 30-minute interactive workshop explores the intersection of slow violence, big data, and environmental justice through the frameworks of Nixon (2011), Mah (2017), and Vera et al. (2019). Participants will examine how the velocity of big data creates three critical "blind spots" – voice, speed, and expertise – that obscure gradual environmental harms unfolding across years and generations. Through guided activities, attendees will identify slow violence cases in their own research contexts and conduct "blind spot audits" to assess how data collection and analysis practices may inadvertently reproduce structural inequalities. The workshop challenges the promise of real-time monitoring and citizen science, arguing that addressing slow violence requires "slow science" – participatory approaches that reconnect data to historical context, center marginalized perspectives, and recognize that political action, not data alone, drives environmental justice. Participants will leave with practical frameworks for critically evaluating data practices and understanding the tension between environmental justice's demand for transparency ("right to know") and data justice's concerns about extraction and surveillance ("right to be forgotten").