< Back to People

Suneel Jethani is a Senior Lecturer in Digital and Social Media in the School of Communication at UTS. Suneel has a PhD from the University of Melbourne which examined self-tracking technology and other elements of data-driven culture. It mapped the cumulative impact of capturing data about health and behaviour across various everyday contexts and found that paradoxes of control and freedom associated with data-capturing technology can be used to inform established design methodologies in insightful ways. Prior to his career as an academic, Suneel worked in the academic publishing industry and in open data policy for the Victorian Government’s Department of Premier and Cabinet in the Digital Design and Innovation Branch (2017-2020). During this time, he conducted first of its kind qualitative, interview-based, research with members of the public sector and its adjacent communities of practice into the perception of risks and opportunities associated with sharing and releasing open government data. This work has been published as a book, Openness in Practice: Understanding Attitudes to Open Government Data (2021, Palgrave, coauthored with Dr Dale Leorke). Suneel is the author of The Politics and Possibilities of Self-Tracking Technology: Data Bodies and Design (2021, Emerald) and has published in journals including Continuum, Cultural Studies, Communication, Politics and Culture, M/C Journal, International Communication Gazette, Persona Studies and Conjunctions: Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation.