Erik Ljungberg

Erik Ljungberg is a PhD candidate in the history of media and environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. In a nutshell, his research grapples with how to render graspable the novel modes of relation between human-beings, the environment, and digital technologies that emerge in the scientific practice of environmental scientists that make use of artificial intelligence. He has been focusing particularly on Earth Observation and remote sensing which makes use of machine learning, as well the use of ML in Swedish Forestry. The aim of his project is three-fold. Firstly, to delineate the techniques of data collecting and processing that are implicated in doing environmental AI. Secondly, to assess the epistemic consequences of these techniques. And thirdly, to provide a genealogy and thorough historical contextualization of the circumstances which enabled the environment to become mediated by machine learning algorithms. Sitting at the crossroads between the themes of science, technology, and the environment, his approach draws from several fields and theoretical lineages, from critical media theory, science and technology studies, post-humanism, anthropology, environmental history, history of knowledge, and critical AI studies.