Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es and Tracey P. Lauriault (eds.), Collaborative Research in the Datafied Society, Amsterdam University Press, 2024

Collaborative Research in the Datafied Society proposes an urgent reorientation of both scholarly practice and academic imagination. It is not a catalogue of techniques or a fashionable plea for "engagement"; it compels readers to reckon with what it means to do research with and through others, in contexts where data is not merely a topic but the medium of social and institutional life. What distinguishes the book is its refusal to treat "collaboration" as a managerial fix, bureaucratic imposition, or neutral method. Instead, collaboration is framed as a profound epistemological and political pivot -a way of resisting the fragmentation of knowledge, the isolation of disciplinary expertise, and academia's self-referential enclosures. The book urges research that is dialogic, open to outside voices, and socially engaged. It repositions the researcher from distant observer or "expert" to engaged interlocutor and co-producer of knowledge, weaving research with practices across public, civic, and technical domains. Collaboration thereby becomes a working space where power, justice, care, and responsibility intersect. This shift is not merely procedural; it challenges foundational academic assumptions and demands humility (Jasanoff 2003) -a willingness to cede authority, question "excellence" metrics, and engage in collectively negotiated and provisional problems, outcomes, and ownership. In this way, Collaborative Research in the Datafied Society situates itself as both a critical contribution and a call for new forms of scholarly responsibility. The book resonates with STS critiques of scientific authority (Haraway 1988) and recent calls in critical data studies for care and co-production (D'Ignazio and Klein 2020), while insisting that, in a world whose infrastructures are increasingly algorithmic, dynamic, and contested, such scholarly responsibility is not optional but urgent. A first transversal theme is the centrality of power, with accountability built into the politics of knowledge production. The book follows how claims are negotiated, disputed, and made actionable in data-saturated settings, and it keeps asking whose interests data work serves. This extends long-running STS debates on expertise, publics, and participation -from expert-lay relations (Collins and Evans 2002) to democratising science (Guston 2004; Fischer 2009) and concerns about asymmetries in ostensibly "open" science (Fox et al. 2021).