Helene Ratner
Biographic Data
| ID | 203345 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helene Ratner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helene |
| FAMILY NAME | Ratner |
| SIGNATURE | RATNER H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0842-4049 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
A Tool, Connector, or Data Processor: On the Multiplicity of an Algorithm and Its Worlds
This paper explores the development of an algorithm for child welfare administration in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic study of the development process, we argue that scientists and IT developers enacted not one but multiple versions of “the” algorithm, and in this process, also engineered its multiple potential worlds. We conceptualize these as “algorithm-worlds”; specific sets of relations in which a version of the algorithm can exist and ac…
Data visualizations as aesthetic devices of valuation: Diverging views of the ‘good’ pupil performance
This article examines how Danish national test data visualizations enact the ‘good’ pupil performance. Theoretically, the article advances the idea of data visualizations as ‘aesthetic devices of valuation’, foregrounding visualizations as socio-technical and evaluative processes that can shape teachers’ attention and vision. This allows examining how the transformation from numbers into visual shapes renders different aspects of pupil performanc…
Computational implementations of responsible AI: From the right to be forgotten to machine unlearning
Citizens’ data afterlives: Practices of dataset inclusion in machine learning for public welfare
Public sector adoption of AI techniques in welfare systems recasts historic national data as resource for machine learning. In this paper, we examine how the use of register data for development of predictive models produces new ‘afterlives’ for citizen data. First, we document a Danish research project’s practical efforts to develop an algorithmic decision-support model for social workers to classify children’s risk of maltreatment. Second, we o…
The politics of data visualizations. Introduction to special issue
This special issue investigates the politics of data visualizations in education, examining how visual tools such as dashboards, benchmarks, and progression curves shape educational practices, perceptions, and governance. Far from offering neutral representations of data, visualizations are performative technologies that construct what counts as educational quality and learning. Bringing together contributions from diverse European contexts, the …
Automation, agencies and aesthetics: The Politics of Data Visualizations in Configuring Teachers' Expertise
It is well-known that digital learning materials influence the classroom curriculum and didactics. At the same time, few studies examine the role of the data visualizations offered by digital learning materials. Data visualizations signpost the emergence of students as data subjects who can be observed and compared on a computer screen. They thus shape teachers’ socio-technical ways of seeing student learning and are likely to influence student a…
Ethical Plateaus in Danish Child Protection Services: The Rise and Demise of Algorithmic Models
This paper analyses how controversies shape an emerging field of AI in Danish child protection services. In a context of high controversiality, we examine how algorithmic systems evolve in conjunction with changing ethical stakes. Empirically, we report a study comprising all Danish attempts (n=4) to develop algorithmic models for child protection services. These attempts were never fully implemented and have been either cancelled, paused or chan…
Algorithmic constructions of risk: Anticipating uncertain futures in child protection services
This paper examines how predictive algorithms construct risk by calculating and anticipating children's uncertain futures. Theoretically, we analyze algorithmic risk construction by attending to (a) the problematizations justifying algorithmic prediction, (b) their underpinning data infrastructures, and (c) the configurations of agencies across humans and machines. Empirically, we examine two experiments in Danish child protection services that d…
Technology and Dis/Organization: Digital data infrastructures as partial connections
This paper addresses the relationship between digital technology and dis/organization by theorizing and analysing digital data infrastructures as partial connections. Much literature attends to the ordering and controlling organizational powers of digital data infrastructures. We propose to expand existing discussions by also exploring their disorganizing aspects. Drawing on Marilyn Strathern, we conceptualize digital data infrastructures as part…
Europeanizing the Danish School through National Testing: Standardized Assessment Scales and the Anticipation of Risky Populations
This paper explores "the peopling of Europe through data practices" in relation to standardized testing of students in Denmark. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a central component of Danish and European education infrastructures. In Denmark, mediocre PISA results spurred the introduction of national testing. With inspiration from Michel Foucault's notion of biopolitics, this paper analyzes how complementary Danish nationa…
Producing and projecting data: Aesthetic practices of government data portals
We develop the concept of 'aesthetic practices' to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education's Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required s…
Describing children at risk: Experiments With Context
Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), this article explores information practices around children deemed to be ‘at risk’. Risk is not a self-evident epistemic object. Different professional instructions mobilize the concept of context to emphasize the partiality and contingency of descriptions of ‘risk’. This article develops the concept of ‘description device’ to account for how the concept of context (1) displaces a teacher’s attenti…
Data warehousing organization: Infrastructural experimentation with educational governance
Organization is increasingly entwined with databased governance infrastructures. Developing the idea of 'infrastructure as partial connection' with inspiration from Marilyn Strathern and Science and Technology Studies, this article proposes that database infrastructures are intrinsic to processes of organizing intra- and inter-organizational relations. Seeing infrastructure as partial connection brings our attention to the ontological experimenta…
The break-up of management: Critique Inside-Out
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Modern Settlements in Special Needs Education: Segregated Versus Inclusive Education
In the history of special needs education, the distinction between human nature and its social environment has been a controversial matter. The controversy regards whether special needs are primarily caused by the child's psycho-medical body or by cultural concepts of normality and deviance. Settlements of this controversy govern whether the pupil or the educational institution becomes the main point of intervention. In Denmark, the particulariti…
The return of the Freudian Couch ®: Managing Affectivity Through Technologies of Comfort
This article explores how the affective “set-up” of Freud’s legendary couch has been exported into modern education relations. The so-called psy-sciences from pedagogy, psychology, and psychiatry have informed self-management in school. Managing self-management has a material-affective dimension. Through affective encounters with the couch, we argue, management can foster and maintain students’ desire to take part in school and enhance their own …
Lean production of intensive cities: Using the power of Italo Calvino's imagination to grasp organizational change
This article analyses the introduction of Lean Production to ‘the Procurement Office’ (the Procurement Office is made anonymous due to promises of confidentiality in the research project ‘Lean without stress’), a work place marked by continuous organizational changes, unfavourable image and high turnover. This is analysed in terms of Italo Calvino's Invisible cities. It is argued that Calvino's themes and prose help us understand change as a mult…
Suggestive Objects at Work: A New Form of Organizational Spirituality
In Western secular societies, spiritual life is no longer limited to classical religious institutions but can also be found at workplace organizations. While spirituality is conventionally understood as a subjective and internal process, this paper proposes the concept of ‘suggestive objects’, constructed by combining insights from Gabriel Tarde's sociology with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, to theorize the material dimension of organizati…
The return of the Freudian Couch ®: Managing Affectivity Through Technologies of Comfort
This article explores how the affective “set-up” of Freud’s legendary couch has been exported into modern education relations. The so-called psy-sciences from pedagogy, psychology, and psychiatry have informed self-management in school. Managing self-management has a material-affective dimension. Through affective encounters with the couch, we argue, management can foster and maintain students’ desire to take part in school and enhance their own …
Automation, agencies and aesthetics: The Politics of Data Visualizations in Configuring Teachers' Expertise
It is well-known that digital learning materials influence the classroom curriculum and didactics. At the same time, few studies examine the role of the data visualizations offered by digital learning materials. Data visualizations signpost the emergence of students as data subjects who can be observed and compared on a computer screen. They thus shape teachers’ socio-technical ways of seeing student learning and are likely to influence student a…
Producing and projecting data: Aesthetic practices of government data portals
We develop the concept of 'aesthetic practices' to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education's Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required s…
Europeanizing the Danish School through National Testing: Standardized Assessment Scales and the Anticipation of Risky Populations
This paper explores "the peopling of Europe through data practices" in relation to standardized testing of students in Denmark. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a central component of Danish and European education infrastructures. In Denmark, mediocre PISA results spurred the introduction of national testing. With inspiration from Michel Foucault's notion of biopolitics, this paper analyzes how complementary Danish nationa…
Data warehousing organization: Infrastructural experimentation with educational governance
Organization is increasingly entwined with databased governance infrastructures. Developing the idea of 'infrastructure as partial connection' with inspiration from Marilyn Strathern and Science and Technology Studies, this article proposes that database infrastructures are intrinsic to processes of organizing intra- and inter-organizational relations. Seeing infrastructure as partial connection brings our attention to the ontological experimenta…
Modern Settlements in Special Needs Education: Segregated Versus Inclusive Education
In the history of special needs education, the distinction between human nature and its social environment has been a controversial matter. The controversy regards whether special needs are primarily caused by the child's psycho-medical body or by cultural concepts of normality and deviance. Settlements of this controversy govern whether the pupil or the educational institution becomes the main point of intervention. In Denmark, the particulariti…
Algorithmic constructions of risk: Anticipating uncertain futures in child protection services
This paper examines how predictive algorithms construct risk by calculating and anticipating children's uncertain futures. Theoretically, we analyze algorithmic risk construction by attending to (a) the problematizations justifying algorithmic prediction, (b) their underpinning data infrastructures, and (c) the configurations of agencies across humans and machines. Empirically, we examine two experiments in Danish child protection services that d…
Technology and Dis/Organization: Digital data infrastructures as partial connections
This paper addresses the relationship between digital technology and dis/organization by theorizing and analysing digital data infrastructures as partial connections. Much literature attends to the ordering and controlling organizational powers of digital data infrastructures. We propose to expand existing discussions by also exploring their disorganizing aspects. Drawing on Marilyn Strathern, we conceptualize digital data infrastructures as part…
The politics of data visualizations. Introduction to special issue
This special issue investigates the politics of data visualizations in education, examining how visual tools such as dashboards, benchmarks, and progression curves shape educational practices, perceptions, and governance. Far from offering neutral representations of data, visualizations are performative technologies that construct what counts as educational quality and learning. Bringing together contributions from diverse European contexts, the …
Describing children at risk: Experiments With Context
Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), this article explores information practices around children deemed to be ‘at risk’. Risk is not a self-evident epistemic object. Different professional instructions mobilize the concept of context to emphasize the partiality and contingency of descriptions of ‘risk’. This article develops the concept of ‘description device’ to account for how the concept of context (1) displaces a teacher’s attenti…
The break-up of management: Critique Inside-Out
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Lean production of intensive cities: Using the power of Italo Calvino's imagination to grasp organizational change
This article analyses the introduction of Lean Production to ‘the Procurement Office’ (the Procurement Office is made anonymous due to promises of confidentiality in the research project ‘Lean without stress’), a work place marked by continuous organizational changes, unfavourable image and high turnover. This is analysed in terms of Italo Calvino's Invisible cities. It is argued that Calvino's themes and prose help us understand change as a mult…
Suggestive Objects at Work: A New Form of Organizational Spirituality
In Western secular societies, spiritual life is no longer limited to classical religious institutions but can also be found at workplace organizations. While spirituality is conventionally understood as a subjective and internal process, this paper proposes the concept of ‘suggestive objects’, constructed by combining insights from Gabriel Tarde's sociology with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, to theorize the material dimension of organizati…
Lean production of intensive cities: Using the power of Italo Calvino's imagination to grasp organizational change
This article analyses the introduction of Lean Production to ‘the Procurement Office’ (the Procurement Office is made anonymous due to promises of confidentiality in the research project ‘Lean without stress’), a work place marked by continuous organizational changes, unfavourable image and high turnover. This is analysed in terms of Italo Calvino's Invisible cities. It is argued that Calvino's themes and prose help us understand change as a mult…
The return of the Freudian Couch ®: Managing Affectivity Through Technologies of Comfort
This article explores how the affective “set-up” of Freud’s legendary couch has been exported into modern education relations. The so-called psy-sciences from pedagogy, psychology, and psychiatry have informed self-management in school. Managing self-management has a material-affective dimension. Through affective encounters with the couch, we argue, management can foster and maintain students’ desire to take part in school and enhance their own …
Modern Settlements in Special Needs Education: Segregated Versus Inclusive Education
In the history of special needs education, the distinction between human nature and its social environment has been a controversial matter. The controversy regards whether special needs are primarily caused by the child's psycho-medical body or by cultural concepts of normality and deviance. Settlements of this controversy govern whether the pupil or the educational institution becomes the main point of intervention. In Denmark, the particulariti…
The break-up of management: Critique Inside-Out
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Data warehousing organization: Infrastructural experimentation with educational governance
Organization is increasingly entwined with databased governance infrastructures. Developing the idea of 'infrastructure as partial connection' with inspiration from Marilyn Strathern and Science and Technology Studies, this article proposes that database infrastructures are intrinsic to processes of organizing intra- and inter-organizational relations. Seeing infrastructure as partial connection brings our attention to the ontological experimenta…
Producing and projecting data: Aesthetic practices of government data portals
We develop the concept of 'aesthetic practices' to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education's Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required s…
Describing children at risk: Experiments With Context
Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), this article explores information practices around children deemed to be ‘at risk’. Risk is not a self-evident epistemic object. Different professional instructions mobilize the concept of context to emphasize the partiality and contingency of descriptions of ‘risk’. This article develops the concept of ‘description device’ to account for how the concept of context (1) displaces a teacher’s attenti…
Europeanizing the Danish School through National Testing: Standardized Assessment Scales and the Anticipation of Risky Populations
This paper explores "the peopling of Europe through data practices" in relation to standardized testing of students in Denmark. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a central component of Danish and European education infrastructures. In Denmark, mediocre PISA results spurred the introduction of national testing. With inspiration from Michel Foucault's notion of biopolitics, this paper analyzes how complementary Danish nationa…
Technology and Dis/Organization: Digital data infrastructures as partial connections
This paper addresses the relationship between digital technology and dis/organization by theorizing and analysing digital data infrastructures as partial connections. Much literature attends to the ordering and controlling organizational powers of digital data infrastructures. We propose to expand existing discussions by also exploring their disorganizing aspects. Drawing on Marilyn Strathern, we conceptualize digital data infrastructures as part…
Ethical Plateaus in Danish Child Protection Services: The Rise and Demise of Algorithmic Models
This paper analyses how controversies shape an emerging field of AI in Danish child protection services. In a context of high controversiality, we examine how algorithmic systems evolve in conjunction with changing ethical stakes. Empirically, we report a study comprising all Danish attempts (n=4) to develop algorithmic models for child protection services. These attempts were never fully implemented and have been either cancelled, paused or chan…
Algorithmic constructions of risk: Anticipating uncertain futures in child protection services
This paper examines how predictive algorithms construct risk by calculating and anticipating children's uncertain futures. Theoretically, we analyze algorithmic risk construction by attending to (a) the problematizations justifying algorithmic prediction, (b) their underpinning data infrastructures, and (c) the configurations of agencies across humans and machines. Empirically, we examine two experiments in Danish child protection services that d…
Automation, agencies and aesthetics: The Politics of Data Visualizations in Configuring Teachers' Expertise
It is well-known that digital learning materials influence the classroom curriculum and didactics. At the same time, few studies examine the role of the data visualizations offered by digital learning materials. Data visualizations signpost the emergence of students as data subjects who can be observed and compared on a computer screen. They thus shape teachers’ socio-technical ways of seeing student learning and are likely to influence student a…
Data visualizations as aesthetic devices of valuation: Diverging views of the ‘good’ pupil performance
This article examines how Danish national test data visualizations enact the ‘good’ pupil performance. Theoretically, the article advances the idea of data visualizations as ‘aesthetic devices of valuation’, foregrounding visualizations as socio-technical and evaluative processes that can shape teachers’ attention and vision. This allows examining how the transformation from numbers into visual shapes renders different aspects of pupil performanc…
Computational implementations of responsible AI: From the right to be forgotten to machine unlearning
Citizens’ data afterlives: Practices of dataset inclusion in machine learning for public welfare
Public sector adoption of AI techniques in welfare systems recasts historic national data as resource for machine learning. In this paper, we examine how the use of register data for development of predictive models produces new ‘afterlives’ for citizen data. First, we document a Danish research project’s practical efforts to develop an algorithmic decision-support model for social workers to classify children’s risk of maltreatment. Second, we o…
The politics of data visualizations. Introduction to special issue
This special issue investigates the politics of data visualizations in education, examining how visual tools such as dashboards, benchmarks, and progression curves shape educational practices, perceptions, and governance. Far from offering neutral representations of data, visualizations are performative technologies that construct what counts as educational quality and learning. Bringing together contributions from diverse European contexts, the …
A Tool, Connector, or Data Processor: On the Multiplicity of an Algorithm and Its Worlds
This paper explores the development of an algorithm for child welfare administration in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic study of the development process, we argue that scientists and IT developers enacted not one but multiple versions of “the” algorithm, and in this process, also engineered its multiple potential worlds. We conceptualize these as “algorithm-worlds”; specific sets of relations in which a version of the algorithm can exist and ac…
Sociology (12 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI (4 works)