Profile

Dr. Koopman's current recent research is focused on the politics of data technologies.  This work is represented in the following publications and profiles:

• How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person. This project focuses on the overlay between information and politics as mediated by a form of subjectivity emergent in the twentieth century.  Research for this work included studies of the early years of scientific personality psychology (ca. 1917-1937), the racialization of real estate appraisal practices in America (ca. 1923-1934), and the history of identification paperwork (ca. 1913-1933).  Summaries of parts of the book are available elsewhere in:
  • A profile of Koopman in The New York Times by David Marchese (2023).
  • An early preivew piece on 'Infopolitics' from the New York Times (2014) and a more recent New York Times piece on Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal (2018)
  • Or, see his talk on "Infopolitics" at his undergrad alma mater (The Evergreen State College, a small public lib arts college in WA state)
• The Our Data, Our Selves web project brings together some of his individual and collaborative research on the genealogies of data systems and their ongoing functions in our historical present.

Ongoing work includes research (individual or collaborative) toward contributions on:

• Relational Egalitarianism in Data Systems
• A Methodology for Evaluating Datasets: Format Anatomies
• A Genealogy of Intelligence Testing in relation to Artificial Intelligence
• A Genealogy of Information in the History of Genetics
• A Genealogy of Medical Records (comparing clinical and insurance records)
• Genealogical Realism in Political Theory
• Selected studies in the History of Philosophy, with current interest in: Simondon and Arendt