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academic positions
education
awards
research activities
publications
presentations
conference organizing
teaching
service
advising
public scholarship
technology proficiencies
2024-present Lecturer Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington Bothell
2022-present Associate Professor
2016-2022 Assistant Professor
Department of Geography, University of Calgary
2023 Visiting Scholar Department of Geography, George Washington University
2023 Visiting Scholar
Institute of Geography, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
2022 Visiting Scholar
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
2022 Visiting Teaching Fellow Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp (Belgium)
2021-2022 Visiting Professor Department of Geography, University of California Berkeley
2021-2022 Visiting Professor
Department of Sociology, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
2015 Ph.D. Geography, University of Washington
2009 M.S. Geographic Information Science, San Diego State University
2006 B.A. Geography (Magna Cum Laude), Eastern Kentucky University
2023-2024 Science & Technology Policy Fellow, American Assocation for the Advancement of Science.
2022 Fellow, Royal Canadian Geographic Society.
2021 $97,265. SSHRC Insight Grant. “Digitizing Carbon Capitalism”. PIs: Ryan Burns, Eliot Tretter
2021 $500 (USD). American Association of Geographers, Research Grant. PI: Ryan Burns. “Spatializing Digital Labor”.
2019 Graduate Student Association Excellence Award in Graduate Supervision
2019 Eyes High Postdoctoral Scholars Competition. 2 years of funding, total value of $110,000. Co-PIs: Ryan Burns, Victoria Fast.
2019 $525,000. Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). “Artificial Intelligence for Public Health (AI4PH): A Focus on Equity and Prevention”. Collaborator.
2018 $53,655. SSHRC Insight Development Grant. “The Politics of Knowledge Representation in Open Data and Smart Cities” PI: Ryan Burns.
2018 $16,500. Urban Alliance: City of Calgary and University of Calgary. “Exploring North American Municipal Data Sharing Agreements”. PI: Ryan Burns. City of Calgary Collaborators: Nichole Wyatt, Cameron Stark.
2016-2019 $150,000. University of Calgary, Human Dynamics Research Strategy. “The Social and Environmental Implications of Smart Cities: A Global Comparative Research Agenda”. PI: Byron Miller Co-PIs: Ryan Burns, et al (see PDF CV)
2017 $25,000. SSHRC Connection Grant. “The Social and Environmental Implications of Smart Cities: Toward a Global Comparative Research Agenda.” PI: Byron Miller. Co-applicants: Ryan Burns, et al (see PDF CV)
2017 $28,000. Mellon Foundation, through University of Calgary. Academic Research and University Libraries: Creating a New Model for Collaboration. “Open Data for a Smarter City: Creating A Data Infrastructure Pilot Initiative”. PI: Ryan Burns.
2017 Department of Geography Graduate Student Association Recognition Award
2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 $3,000. Calgary Institute for the Humanities Working Group. “Social Justice and the Smart City”. Conveners: Ryan Burns, and many others
2025 3rd U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Symposium. “Session V: Smart and Connected Cities”. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; and the Republic of Rwanda. Kigali, Rwanda.
2024 Institute for Critical Social Inquiry Summer Seminar. “Politics in the Age of Sensory Reproducibility” section with Susan Buck-Morss. The New School of Social Research, New York City.
2022 Knowledge and Digital Technology; 19th symposium of the Klaus Tschira Symposia on Knowledge and Space. Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
2018 Technology, Law, and Society Summer Institute. University of California - Irvine.
2018 Globalization and Digitization - (New) Geoinformation Relationships in the World. Forum for the Study of the Global Condition: Jena, Germany. Personal invitation as participant and keynote speaker in 4-day workshop.
2016-2017 Ethics of Location-Based Technologies in Crisis Workshop. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Washington, DC.
2016 Participant, Summer Institute in Economic Geography. Lexington, KY, University of Kentucky.
2015 Fellow, Data Science for Social Good Fellowship. eScience Institute, University of Washington.
2013 Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme. i-School, University of Toronto, Canada
2011 Bergen Summer Research School University of Bergen, Norway
Select Articles and Book Chapters
2023 Tretter, E., R. Burns. Digital Transformations of the Urban – Carbon – Labor Nexus: A Research Agenda. Digital Geography & Society 5: 1-9.
2023 Burns, R., P. Welker. Interstitiality in the Smart City: Beyond Top-down and Bottom-up Smartness. Urban Studies.
2023 Mackinnon, Debra, R. Burns, V. Fast (Eds.). Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City. University of Toronto Press.
2022 Burns, Ryan, A Lauren-Hoffman, P Welker. Toward Intimate Data: Re-thinking digital, social, political relations. Association of Internet Researchers 2022: Dublin, Ireland. (Peer reviewed)
2022 Burns, R., P. Welker. “Make our communities better through data”: The Moral Economy of Smart City Labor. Big Data & Society 9(1).
2021 Mouton, Morgan, R. Burns. (Digital) Neo-colonialism and the Smart City. Regional Studies 55(12): 1890-1901. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2021.1915974.
2021 Miller, B., K. Ward, R. Burns, V. Fast, A. Levenda. Worlding and Provincialising Smart Cities: From Individual Case Studies to a Global Comparative Research Agenda. Urban Studies. OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020976086.
2021 Burns, Ryan. Transgressions: Reflecting on Critical GIS and Digital Geographies. Digital Geography & Society 2: 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2021.100011 (open access).
2020 Burns, Ryan, M. Andrucki. Smart Cities: Who Cares?. Environment & Planning A 53(1): 12-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20941516.
2020 Burns, Ryan. A COVID-19 Panacea in Digital Technologies? Challenges for Democracy and Higher Education. Dialogues in Human Geography 10(2): 246–249. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2043820620930832.
2020 Burns, Ryan, P. Welker. Moral Economies of Open Data Platforms. Association of Internet Researchers 2020: Virtual conference. (Peer reviewed)
2019 Burns, Ryan, G. Wark. Where’s the Database in Digital Ethnography? Exploring Database Ethnography for Open Data Research. Qualitative Research 20(5): 598-616. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794119885040.
2019 Burns, Ryan. New Frontiers of Philanthro-capitalism: Digital Technologies and Humanitarianism. Antipode 51(4):1101-1122. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12534.
2019 Burns, Ryan. A City of Digital Engagement. In R. Kitchin, J. Shaw, M. Graham, S. Mattern (eds.), How to Run the City Like A Corporation, and Other Fables. Meatspace Press.
2019 Burns, Ryan. “Let the Private Sector Take Care of This”: The Philanthro-capitalism of Digital Humanitarianism. In M. Graham (ed.), Digital Economies at the Global Margins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2018 Burns, Ryan. Datafying Disaster: Institutional Framings of Data Production following Superstorm Sandy. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108(2): 569-578. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1402673.
Edited Journal Issues (with Peer Review)
2021 Thatcher, Jim, R. Burns, C. Dalton. “Regional Approaches to data, environment, and society”. Special issue of Regional Studies.
2021 Miller, Byron, R. Burns, V. Fast, A. Levenda. “Between Provincializing and Worlding Smart Cities”. Special Issue of Urban Studies.
2018 Burns, Ryan, C. Dalton, J. Thatcher. “Critical Data, Critical Technology in Theory and Practice.” Special Issue of Professional Geographer.
2017 Burns, Ryan, N. Lally. “Toward a Geographical Software Studies.” Special Section of Computational Culture.
2015 Burns, Ryan, D. Meek. “The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Geoweb.” Special Issue of ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies.
2014 Burns, Ryan, J. Thatcher. “What’s So Big about Big Data? Finding the Spaces and Perils of Big Data.” Special Issue of GeoJournal.
Papers presented
2024 “Futuring smart cities and smart petroleum futures: The dual melding smartness of extraction and urbanization”. International Geographical Conference: Dublin, Ireland. Presented with Eliot Tretter.
2024 “All that is urban melts into data: Circulations of matter and energy in the digital city”. Annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers: London, UK. Presented with Morgan Mouton.
2024 “Futuring the (Urban) Necrosphere: Anticipations of the Digitalizing Petroleum”. Annual meeting of the Urban Affairs Association: New York, NY. Presented with Eliot Tretter.
2023 “A River of Data Runs through It: Examining Urban Circulations in the Digital Age”. Association of Internet Researchers 2023: Philadelphia, PA. Presented with Morgan Mouton.
2023 “Digital Transformations of the Urban – Carbon – Labor Nexus: A Research Agenda”. Annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Denver, CO. Presented with Eliot Tretter.
2023 “‘Make our communities better through data’: The moral economy of smart city labor”. Annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Denver, CO.
2022 “Toward Intimate Data: Re-thinking digital, social, political relations”. Association of Internet Researchers. Dublin, Ireland. Presented with Preston Welker and Anna Lauren Hoffman.
2022 “Speculations toward a machinic justice”. Royal Geographic Society – Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) annual conference. Virtual. Presentation with Gwendolyn Blue.
Conference Sessions Organized
2025 “AI and the Global Climate Crisis”. Annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Detroit, MI.
2024 “GeoAI Symposium”. Annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Honolulu, HI. Program Committee member.
2023 “Digitalizing Extractive Economies: New Practices, New Questions?” Annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Denver, CO. Organized with Eliot Tretter.
2021 “(Im)material streams in the city: ecologies, economies, electrons”. Open Panel, 4S 2021 (Society for Social Studies of Science). Toronto and virtual. Organizer with Morgan Mouton.
2021 “Re-spatializing Digital Labor”. Annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Virtual conference. Organized with Luke Bergmann (University of British Columbia).
2019 “Gendering the Smart City: Towards Just and Feminist Urban Futures”. Annual Meeting of the AAG. Washington, DC. Organized with Ayona Datta, Nabeela Ahmed, and Max Andrucki.
2024 Local organizing committee. Society for the Social Study of Science (4S). Seattle, WA.
2023 Organizer. Digital Geographic Movements and Methods. University of Calgary.
2018 Organizer. 13th Annual Critical Geographies Mini-conference. University of Calgary.
2017 Co-organizer. “Emerging Theories in Critical Cartography and GIS”. Workshop concurrent with the North American Cartographic Information Society. Montreal, QC.
2017 Co-organizer. “The Social and Environmental Implications of Smart Cities: a Global Comparative Research Agenda”. Workshop at University of Calgary.
Advanced Research and Applications in GIS; Urban and Environmental GIS; Introduction to Geospatial Methods; Urban Studies Capstone; Spaces of Urban Politics (U of Calgary)
Artificial Intelligence for Community Public Health (UofC study abroad)
Smart Cities Asia: Geography Field School (UofC study abroad)
Representation, Capstone Seminar (UofC Arts & Sciences Honours Academy)
Web and Mobile GIS; Digital Mapping; Fundamentals of GIS (Temple U)
GIS Databases and Programming; Cultural Geography; The Making of World Regions; Urban GIS (U Washington)
2023-present Associate Editor, GeoJournal
2020-present Editorial Board, Digital Geography & Society
2017-present Editorial Board for ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies
2020-present Secretary & Treasurer, Digital Geographies Specialty Group of the AAG*
2018-2022 Book review editor, The Canadian Geographer
Post-docs: Debra Mackinnon (2019-2021), Morgan Mouton (2018-2019), Anthony Levenda (2017-2018)
PhD: Joyce Percel, Xinyu Deng, Dafne da Silva Araujo
MA & MGIS: Preston Welker (2021), Angela Ambrose (2021)
Graduated: Dare Adeyemi (2020), Prakash Gautam (2019)
2019-2020 Co-chair, Alberta Non-profit Data Strategy – Data Hubs Task Group. (stewardship of PolicyWise, Edmonton, AB).
2019 Organizer. “Working with Open Data”. Cyber Summit. Kananaskis Country, AB. Co-organized by personal invitation with David Chan and Byron Chu of Cybera.
2018 Inaugural lecture, “Social and Technological Humanitarian Studies” program, University of Calgary. A lecture I organized to report to my department the research I’ve been doing.
2018 Keynote presenter, “Open Data Community of Practice” workshop. City of Calgary, AB.
2018 Organizer, “YYC Data Collective Launch Workshop”. Community engagement session for YYC Data Collective, in collaboration with local volunteer and research organizations.
2017 2-day University of Calgary map-a-thon for Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day, contributing to Building Canada 2020.
