How information systems represent people
My research examines how information systems represent people and what happens when those representations become consequential.
Organisations depend on categories, records, and shared definitions to identify people and make decisions about them. These representations are necessarily partial. They capture selected details about a person for a particular purpose in a particular organisational context and historical context.
Problems arise when these representations become difficult to change, move between contexts, or no longer correspond enough with the lives of the people they describe. A record might be accurate in one systems, but could be inadequate in another system. The same person might be represented differently across several systems, even when none of the individual records are necessarily wrong.
Research themes
Representation
Information systems don’t encounter a person in their entirety. They work through data models, categories, and records that select certain aspects of that person and make them legible to the organisation.
I’m interested in how these representations are constructed, what they enable organisations to see and what they leave out. I also look at what happens when data intended to describe a person begins to shape how that person is recognised and treated.
Infrastructure and change
Information infrastructure needs a certain amount of stability. Definitions, standards, and technical agreements have to stay consistent enough for organisations and systems to work together.
People’s lives, organisational needs, policies, and laws don’t remain stable in the same way. My research asks what happens when changes in the world have to be incorporated into infrastructure built around earlier categories and assumptions.
Part of this work involves changes to classifications across interconnected systems, as well as the delays, conflicts, and inconsistencies that can emerge during that process.
Consequences
Representations in data become consequential when they’re used to determine how people are recognised, classified, or given access to services.
My work looks at these consequences from the perspective of the people who are represented. I’m particularly interested in the hidden work that people do when records don’t align, the burden that’s created by slow infrastructural change, and the unequal distribution of that burden.
Doctoral Research
Information Infrastructural Violence
My doctoral research examined what happened when India’s gender classification changes from two legally recognised categories to three, and that change had to be incorporated into government information infrastructure.
The legal recognition of a transgender category represents an important change. Implementing it, however, involved much more than just adding another option to the forms. The new classification had to be interpreted and incorporated across legislation, policies, administrative practices, databases, documents, and everyday interactions with government organisations.
I studied how this process was experienced by transgender and gender-diverse people, and how their experiences were shaped by the slow and uneven evolution of the wider infrastructure.
Thesis
Information Infrastructural Violence: A Critical, Intersectional Study of Gender Recategorization in Government Information Infrastructure
Katherine Wyers, 2025
Doctoral thesis, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo.
Case and methods
The research drew on three months of ethnographic fieldwork in Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, including semi-structured interviews with trangender and gender-diverse people, bureaucrats, and members of civil society. The study also included a focus group, document analysis, and fieldnotes.
The analysis brought information infrastructure into conversation with intersectionality, structural violence, and slow violence. Taking lived experience as the starting point, the approach made it possible to examine infrastructural change not only as a technical or organisational process, but also as something that people encounter in their everyday lives.
Findings
The research found that a change that was intended to provide legal recognition could still produce new burdens and risks as it moved through an established government information infrastructure.
New and old classifications continued to exist alongside one another. Definitions were interpreted differently by different organisations and officials. People had to work across inconsistent records and administrative expectations while the infrastructure changed around them.
These burdens were not distributed equally. A person’s ability to navigate mismatched records, changing requirements and administrative discretion was shaped by their wider social and economic circumstances.
Contribution
The thesis developed the concept of collateral burden to describe the work and consequences transferred onto individuals during infrastructural change.
It also extended information infrastructure theory by examining the relationship between the slow temporality of infrastructure and the everyday temporality of people’s lives. In doing so, the research showed how violence can arise not only through an explicit act or decision, but through delay, inconsistency, accumulated administrative work and the persistence of categories inherited from the installed base.
Current research
My current research develops this agenda beyond the specific case of gender recategorisation.
I’m exploring how organisations construct representations of people, how those representations move between systems and how they become involved in decisions about recognition, eligibility, and access. This includes situations where several records might be accurate within their original context but become incompatible when they’re connected or used for a different purpose.
I’m also interested in how we might rethink personal data when it does more than describe a person. Some data helps people enact, communicate, or establish who they are within an organisation. Treating that data as equivalent to data about transactions or physical assets overlooks its role in recognition and identity.
Across this work, I’d developing a broader account of the relationship between people, data, and information infrastructure. The aim is to understand how organisations can maintain workable systems while responding more carefully to the complexity and changeability of the people those systems represent.
Selected projects
These projects develop different parts of my wider research into how information systems represent people, how those representations change, and what happens when they become consequential.
Gender recategorisation in government information infrastructure
This research examines how a change to India’s legally recognised gender categories was incorporated into governement information infrastructure and experienced in people’s everyday lives.
The legal recognition of a transgender category required changes across policies, administrative processes, databases, documents, and interactions with government organisations. These changes didn’t happen everywhere at once or produce a single, consistent interpretation of the category. New and existing classifications continued to operate alongside one another as the infrastructure evolved.
Drawing on ethnographic research with transgender and gender-diverse people, bureaucrats, and members of civil society, the project examines the work people undertook to navigate inconsisten records, changing requirements and administrative discretion. It also considers how the consequences of infrastructural change were shaped by people’s wider social and economic circumstances.
Related Research
- Information Infrastructural Violence
- Torqued by an Identity Recategorization
- Identity Categories ad Boundary Objects
- Managing Discretion at the Street Level of Information Systems Use
Personal data and recognition
Organisations commonly treat personal data as information that describes an individual. This project asks what changes when personal data does more than describe someone and instead participates in how they are recognised within an organisation.
Using gender identity data as an example, the research develops the concept of enactive data. Enactive data allows people to communicate or establish aspects of who they are in detalied environments. Its significance therefore cannot be understood only through familiar questions of privacy, ownership, or data quality.
The project considers what this means for organisations that collect and use personal data, particularly when the categories available within their systems don’t adequately represent the people that the data relates to.
Related research
- Making Personal Data Personal: The Emergence of Enactive Data in Organizations
Identity data, infrastructure, and institutional change
This developing area of research looks at what happens when representations of people move between systems, organisations, and institutional contexts.
A person may be represented differently across several systems even when the individual records are accurate for the purposes for which they were created. Problems can emerge when these records are connected, compared, or use to make decisions in a different context. Differences that were previously manageable may then appear as errors, inconsistencies, or questions about the person’s identity.
This work examines how organisations can maintain sufficiently stable information infrastructure while responding more carefull to changes in people’s lives, organisational needs, policies, and laws. It also considers how mismatched or inadequate records can shape recognition, elibiligity, and access to services.
Related research
- Health ICTs and Transgender Health Equity
- Identity Platforms and Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation
- Leaving No-one Behind? A Research Agenda for Queer Issues in ICT4
Selected writing
My writing develops these questions through empirical research, theoretical work, and engagement with information systems practice.
Information Infrastructural Violence
Doctoral thesis, 2025
An ethnographic study of the consequences of incorporating a new gender classification into government information infrastructure in India. The thesis develops the concept of collatoral burden to describe the work and consequences transferred onto individuals during infrastructural change.
Identity Categories as Boundary Objects
Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems, 2025
Best Paper Award
An examination of conflict and resistance when identity categories are used as boundary objects in collaboration. The paper considers what happens when the interpretive flexibility that can support collaboration also has consequences for recognition, rights, and wellbeing.
Health ICTs and Transgender Health Equity
Information Technology for Development, 2024
A critical review and research agenda examining how health information and communication technologies can shape the inclusion and exclusion of transgender and gender-diverse people in healthcare.
Making Personal Data Personal
Technology, Management, and Design for Social Justice, 2026
A conceptual examination of personal data that participates in the enactment and recognition of identity. The chapter introduces enactive data as a way of understanding data that does more than describe the person to whom it relates.
Research connections
I’m open to conversations with researchers and practitioners working on information infrastructure, personal, and identity data, classification, digital government, and the consequences of information systems in people’s everyday lives.
I’m particularly interested in work that connects close attention to lived experience with questions about how organisational and technical infrastructure is designed, maintained, and changed.