Data Justice for the New Data: Contextualizing Data Storage and Protection in Decentralized Trust Technologies Used in Conflict Contexts

The goal of this research project is to understand how well blockchain and distributed ledger projects conducted in humanitarian settings live up to their potential for benefitting technology users. The research will consider this question through the lens of data justice, an emerging framework that looks at the storage and protection of digital data and how technology users are treated when they produce digital data. This framework is relevant to the production of the data generated by the way individuals lead their social and economic lives online. The project partners with Peer Social, an organization currently building a solution for displaced individuals in Ukraine to use this type of data to attest to their identity and ownership of homes, lands, and properties (HLP) that may have been destroyed in the war caused by Russian aggression. The project will deliver a set of recommendations for Peer Social and other technology providers working on humanitarian blockchain projects for how they might attend to data justice in their products and a scholarly research paper on the topic.

Faculty Supervisor:

Victoria Lemieux

Student:

Partner:

Modern Being Corporation

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: