CoSEP
COLLECTIVE for SOCIO-SPATIAL
& ENVIRONMENTAL PRAXIS
UC DAVIS
RESEARCH TRACKS AND THEMES
ABOUT
Established in Dec 2023, CoSEP undertakes transdisciplinary,
research-driven projects to address the socio-spatial and political nature of designing and governing the built environment to facilitate the fullness of life. CoSEP's projects lie at the intersection of design, technology, governance, and social justice. We are committed to praxis, or the reflective manner of combining theory and practice to achieve and sustain just futures. CoSEP is housed at the University of California, Davis, on the land of the home of the Patwin people.
© Akshita Sivakumar 2023 - 2024
RESEARCH TRACK:
Technoscience of
Environmental Governance
This research track brings Design, Science & Technology Studies (STS), and Critical Environmental Justice together to analyze how computing, electronic, and digital technologies mediate environmental governance and environmental justice.
Taking the example of decarbonization and air pollution mitigation in California, this research track analyzes the design and use of these mediating technologies and their downstream effects on the environmental justice movement. This project builds on the PI’s dissertation, which included over three years of ethnographic work in San Diego and Sacramento.
EXPLORE THEMES UNDER THIS TRACK
#1 .......... Model Governance
#2 ..........Technologies of Accountability and Solidarity
PUBLICATIONS:
(accepted; forthcoming) Sivakumar, Akshita. “Agonistic Arrangements: Design for Dissensus in Environmental Governance.” International Journal of Design. 2025.
Sivakumar, Akshita. “Lagoons of Effluvia.” Journal of Architectural Education, July 2, 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10464883.2024.2382004.
Sivakumar, Akshita. “Model Governance, Model Solidarity: Social Infrastructures and Regulatory Technologies in California.” UC San Diego, 2023. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s15r9w1.
Sivakumar, Akshita. “Data Surrogates as Hosts: Politics of Environmental Governance.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9, no. 1 (April 5, 2023). https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v9i1.38144.
Sivakumar, Akshita, Sarina Vega, and Colin Miller. “EJAC Community Engagement Synthesis Report 2022.” California: Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, June 2022.
Sivakumar, Akshita. “Materialities of Shiny Surfaces: A Case of Chrome.” In Designing the Computational Image, edited by Theodora Vardouli and Daniel Cordoso Llach. Applied Research and Design Publishing, 2021.