Research & Programming

Data in the Dark: Invisibility of the Night in North American Urban Governance

Overview

This project investigates how community-based organizations and local governments in Mexico City, Montreal, and Washington DC use technologies to collect, archive and process data related to nighttime activities.

The goal is to examine the shifting boundaries, definitions and applications of data in cities after dark – from qualitative citizen-generated data collection to the recent deployment of algorithms to govern urban spaces. In this process, we will highlight the dangers and opportunities of individuals being visible as data points.

This project fills a gap in the emerging interdisciplinary field of Night Studies by looking at data practices simultaneously as storytelling and evidence-building. Negotiations around what is considered “valid” data shape how the night is archived, governed and represented. We will consider data as both human-centered (spreadsheets, maps, informal archives, journalistic guides, audiovisual documentation, literature and oral history) and machine-centered (artificial intelligence systems, sensors, and surveillance). Project outcomes include scholarly publications, open datasets, and a reports with key takeaways and frameworks.

Research Team

Faculty Co-Lead

Jess Reia

Affiliations

Assistant Professor of Data Science, School of Data Science

Bio

Jess Reia is an assistant professor of data science and a faculty co-lead at the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia (UVA). In 2025, Reia was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. They are also a visiting scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C. Reia works primarily on topics of technology policy and human rights transnationally, being interested in the untold stories in our datasets, citizen-generated data and how artificial intelligence is transforming the way we think about evidence and representation.

A policymaker by training, Reia's research and advocacy agenda has focused on building collaborations with government and civil society organizations in Brazil, Canada, and the U.S. for over a decade, resulting in numerous resources to support policy- and decision-making and academic publications in four languages. Reia is also a public scholar whose writing and interviews were featured in various outlets, including Estadão, Le Devoir and BBC. Before joining UVA, they were appointed Mellon postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, studying the impact of smart-washing and datafication in nocturnal urban spaces and their communities. Reia held a two-year mandate as a member of MTL 24/24's first Night Council in Montreal. Prior to that, they worked at the Center for Technology & Society at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro.

Reia's latest book, "Urban Music Governance: What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities" (Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2025), explores what happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands. A transnational exploration of often unseen aspects of urban governance, it examines the intricate limits of legality, data visibility, and resistance from the perspective of those working at the social and regulatory margins of society.

Currently, Reia teaches courses for future data scientists on ethics, governance, and policy. Past courses have included a focus on urban data, digital rights, intellectual property, and research methods.

Full Profile

Professor of Urban Media Studies, McGill University

William Straw

Will Straw is Professor of Urban Media Studies. He has been Visiting Professor at the Open University (Budapest), the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of Belgrade. He is also Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture, Carleton University.

Professor Straw has a Bachelor degree in Film Studies, and postgraduate degrees in Communications Studies. Much of his work has dealt with the social and institutional dimensions of popular music, and with the development of the notion of music scene. He has a strong interest, as well, in histories of popular music in Montreal, Quebec and Canada.

More recently, Dr. Straw’s research has come to focus on the ways in which the night-time culture of cities is governed, promoted and represented. On the one hand, this takes the form of an interest in new policy instruments adopted by cities so as to acknowledge the role of night-time culture within them. On the other hand, this interest takes him into the study of narrative forms (in the cinema, journalism and fiction) that treat the night as a distinct “territory” of human experience. Straw maintains a website, theurbannight.com, that tracks developments in night-time urban culture.

Dr. Straw is on the editorial boards of many of the leading journals in several fields, including Screen, Cultural Studies, Intermédialités, Convergences: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Space and Culture, and Journal of Urban Cultural Studies. With Kieran Bonner, he co-edits the book series Culture of Cities (McGill-Queens University Press). With Bart Beaty, he edits the series Canadian Cinema (University of Toronto Press).

For a full list of Dr. Straw’s publications, with links for downloads of many of them, visit his website, willstraw.com

Senior Research Fellow, Coordinator, Social and Cultural Studies Department, Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte

Alejandro Mercado-Celís

Alejandro Mercado-Celís is a Senior Research Fellow and Coordinator of the Social and Cultural Studies Department at CISAN-UNAM. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning (specializing in regional and international development) from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently a SNI II and Ambassador to Mexico for the Regional Studies Association. He coordinates ongoing research seminars on Creative and Cultural Industries and Night Studies.

He is currently co-leader of the PAPIIT group project OG300724 “Emerging Digital Communities of Knowledge Creation.”

Professor, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana

Yolanda Macías

Yolanda Guerra Macías holds a PhD in Humanities (Literature) from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) and is a full-time professor and researcher at UACM. She is committed to the social issues of her country through studies focused on communication and literature. She has edited various scientific journals and contributed to communication plans focused on preventing diseases and social problems that afflict Mexican society. She is an active member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico and a member of the Research Network in Ibero-America and Africa (Ricsiba): https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7289-1784