Rattanmeek Kaur

As digital and data-driven technologies become more prevalent in our lives and in determining our lived realities, there is a growing need to investigate the many facets of this global shift. This chapter chronicles key learnings and guiding principles underpinning the role of transdisciplinary research at this intersection of digital technology and society. Through case studies, snapshots of projects, and a discussion around guiding principles and processes embedded in the work of the Aapti Institute, a women-led and women-majority nonprofit research organisation based in India, we highlight the need for transdisciplinary work at this intersection. We begin by discussing the wicked problem situating some of the core issues emergent in an increasingly datafied and digital world. Next, we shed light on first principles spanning the Aapti Institute's efforts in conducting meaningful research and driving impact – with particular focus on methodology. This leads us to explore foundational values and their manifestations (or in some cases, beginnings) in projects. In each project, a different aspect of transdisciplinarity is in focus. Finally, we discuss how transdisciplinary methods have played out, connecting with existing scholarship and reflecting upon areas that may require greater priority in research practice. We argue that the criticality of transdisciplinary attitudes, teams, and processes has enabled meaningful pathways to impact – toward the vision of a more just, fair, and equitable digital world. Further, the situated knowledge and meaningful involvement of impacted communities must be a cornerstone for transdisciplinary thinking.

With the growing digitisation of healthcare services, health data infrastructures play a critical role in healthcare and medical research. Health data are relational in nature and can reproduce historical inequities and manifest colonial patterns, where Global North notions and agendas for healthcare and research are replicated. In this light, governance of health data infrastructures needs to be centred within the sociopolitical context of these infrastructures, promoting the data interests of communities, especially vulnerable and marginalised communities. However, current data protection frameworks that prioritise individual privacy rights are inadequate for addressing collective, context-dependent harms arising from data use. To address this governance gap, the article advocates for a shift from privacy-centric governance to a data justice approach, and seeks to layer data justice with a solidarity-based, decolonial approach. The theoretical and practical dimensions of this approach are explored through three key elements: constitutional, procedural and positional. Constitutional elements deal with the foundational principles or logic underlying the governance architecture of the health data infrastructures. Seen through a justice lens, these constitutional elements are geared towards acknowledging, preventing and mitigating inequities in healthcare and health data activities. Further, procedural elements are building blocks with the aim of embedding tangible mechanisms within governance architecture. Lastly, positionality is the connective tissue that weaves together the constitutional and procedural elements. It is understood as the inherently embodied nature of knowledge, knowledge creation and its processes. It brings forth the criticality of the situatedness of knowledge and power structures, and urges us to imagine governance that does not seek to escape perspective, but makes vantage points both explicit and answerable.