Research & Programming

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

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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

Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte

Alejandro Mercado-Celis

Alejandro Mercado-Celis is a Full Professor and Coordinator of the Area of Social and Cultural Studies at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (CISAN) (Center for Research on North America) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous University of Mexico), where he has been a faculty member since 1990. He has been a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, SNI) since 1997 and serves as Ambassador in Mexico for the Regional Studies Association. His work focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of North American economies, urban nightlife, creative industries, and transnational production networks.

A scholar with a long-standing commitment to interdisciplinary research, Mercado-Celis has led multiple collaborative research groups funded by UNAM’s PAPIIT (Program to Support Research and Technological Innovation / Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica) program. Most recently, he serves as Principal Investigator of the consolidated research project PAPIIT IG300724 “Comunidades digitales emergentes de creación de conocimiento” (“Emerging Digital Communities of Knowledge Creation”) (2024–2026). Previously, he led PAPIIT IN303820 “Comunidades virtuales en las industrias culturales” (“Virtual Communities in the Cultural Industries”) (2020–2022), a multidisciplinary project and internal seminar that brought together five researchers from CISAN, three from the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas e Información (IIBI) (Institute for Library and Information Research), one from the Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa (Autonomous University of Sinaloa), and one from the University of Arizona, as well as three postdoctoral researchers and graduate and undergraduate students. His recent publications include the books Redes Transnacionales de Producción Cinematográfica en Norteamérica (Transnational Production Networks in North American Cinema, CISAN-UNAM, 2026) and Noche Urbana y Economía Nocturna en América del Norte (Urban Night and the Nocturnal Economy in North America, co-authored with Edna Hernández González, CISAN-UNAM / Université de Bretagne Occidentale, 2020). He also published the article “Violencia homicida y transformación de la economía del ocio nocturno en México (1999-2023)” (“Homicidal Violence and the Transformation of the Nocturnal Leisure Economy in Mexico, 1999–2023”) in Sociológica (Vol. 41, No. 113, 2026), co-coordinated with Yolanda Macías the dossier La noche como objeto sociológico (Night as a Sociological Object) in the same issue, and edited the forum “Nocturnal Cities: Past, Present, and Future” in Forum Sociológico (2023). He has also held visiting professor positions at the Institut des Amériques / Brest Institut de Géoarchitecture at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale in France (2021) and at the Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos (Institute of Latin American Studies) at the Universidad de Salamanca (University of Salamanca) in Spain (2014). Before serving at CISAN-UNAM, he was Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa (UAM-C) (Metropolitan Autonomous University-Cuajimalpa) from 2010 to 2014.

Mercado-Celis is also an active public scholar whose research has been featured in radio, television, and print media. He hosted the radio program América del Norte Hoy, Economía, Política y Cultura (North America Today: Economy, Politics and Culture), bringing academic perspectives on North American affairs to broader audiences. At UNAM, he teaches the doctoral seminar “Perspectivas teóricas y metodológicas para el estudio de las industrias creativas culturales” (“Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives for the Study of Creative and Cultural Industries”), part of the PhD program in Political and Social Sciences (Doctorado en Ciencias Políticas y Sociales) at the Posgrado en Ciencias Políticas y Sociales (Graduate Program in Political and Social Sciences).

Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana

Yolanda Guerra Macías

News

Map of the U.S. in the dark with city lights illuminated

Data in the Dark

Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation’s Global Programs of Distinction Grant

Jess Reia, DTD Lab faculty co-lead, has recently received a grant from the UVA Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation’s Global Programs of Distinction to support their Data in the Dark project - a collaboration between researchers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

cgii.virginia.edu