Student profile
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Janna Frenzel
Thesis supervisor: Alessandra Renzi
Thesis title: “Green computing” and the redesign of digital communication systems for low-carbon futures [working title]
Janna Frenzel is a PhD candidate at the Communication Studies department at Concordia University. Her research focuses on the environmental and social impacts of computing infrastructure, the role of extraction in the digital economy, and cultural imaginaries of energy and techno-futures. In her dissertation, she investigates how different actors are attempting to decarbonize Internet infrastructures and reimagine digital communication systems through design practices that are rooted in principles of climate justice and respect for planetary boundaries. Janna’s PhD research is supported by a Concordia University Graduate Fellowship (2019-2023) and a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral scholarship (2021-2024).
Janna has worked as a teaching assistant in the Communication and Engineering Departments and as a research assistant in the following projects: with Dr. Alessandra Renzi in a project called “Digital Divides” which looked at the role of technology companies in urban gentrification processes, and with Dr. Fenwick McKelvey in the “Memes in Canadian Politics” project that studied the online circulation and encoding of politics and partisanship through memes. She is a founding member of the Solar Media Collective and a member of the Grierson Research Group.
Before starting her PhD, Janna worked as a communication strategist and writer/editor for non-profit clients with a focus on sustainable urbanism. She holds a MA and a BA in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin.
Publications (selected)
2024
- [forthcoming, October 2024] “Data and Technological Spatial Politics“, in Juliane Jarke and Jo Bates (eds): Dialogues in Data Power: Shifting Response-abilities in a Datafied World, Bristol University Press (co-authored with Y. Baumann, E. Guay, L. King, A. Megelas, A. Renzi, J. Rone, S. Shahamati, H. Vaughan, T. Vukov, R. Kitchin and J. Bates)
- “Hopeful and Just Futures Across Scales”, Utopian Studies (co-authored with Isabelle Boucher, Alex Custodio, Hanine El Mir, and Robert Marinov)
- "Open and Closed Software: A Climate Concern", Container Magazine (co-authored with lee wilkins)
2023
- “Decentralized and rooted in care: envisioning the digital infrastructures of the future“, Branch Magazine, Issue 6: Green Screen (co-authored with Paola Mosso)
- “Labor: How tech worker organizing intersects with climate action", Branch Magazine, Issue 5: Critical Carbon Computing (co-authored with Tamara Kneese and Benjamin Peters)
- “Caring for things that are broken: Repair of electronics as counterpoint to disposability”, in: Brunner, Christoph, Grit Marti Lange, and nate wessalowski (eds.). Technopolitics of Care, transversal. [in German, English version forthcoming]
- “Data Rush: How ‘Green’ Computing is Opening Up a New Frontier in Arctic Norway”, in White, Darcy, Julia Peck, and Chris Goldie (eds.): Disturbed ecologies: geopolitics and the northern landscape in the era of environmental crisis, Transcript / Columbia University Press
- “Techno-Solutionism and Strategies of Delay: The Bay du Nord Development Project". Heliotrope (co-authored with Helen A. Hayes)
- “Can the heat from running computers help grow our food? It’s complicated“. The Conversation (co-authored with Sarah-Louise Ruder)
2022
- “Digital Divides – The Impact of Montreal’s AI Ecosystems on Parc Extension: Housing, Environment and Access to Services” (co-authored with N. Gertler, E. Herron, L. I. King, F. McKelvey, A. Megelas, N. Rantisi, A. Renzi, J. Ryan, and n. wessalow)
- “Imagining an AI Commons” (report, with Fenwick McKelvey and Bart Simon)
2021
- McKelvey, Fenwick, Scott DeJong, and Janna Frenzel. 2021. “Memes, Scenes and #elxn2019s: How Partisans Make Memes during Elections.” New Media & Society 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211020690.
2020
- “Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility.” New Media & Society 22(5): 923–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820907083 [book review]
2018
- “The pressure to condemn: narrating the Stockholm riot of 2013”, in Starodub, A. and Robinson, A. (eds.). Riots and Militant Occupations, Rowman & Littlefield.