East India Company Platform Studies is an interdisciplinary research collective organized around the worlds' most studied corporate monopoly: The East India Company – as the predecessor to modern digital platforms like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent etc.

The East India Company Platform Study collective brings together anti-colonial theory, social science, social work and artistic practice to examine the roots of platform operating systems in centuries-old corporate design.

This collaboration illuminates the importance of local regional knowledges and interdisciplinary frameworks for making sense of modern digital problems, like divisive polarization, lateral violence, discrimination and monopolization as legacies of colonial management technique.

Members
Elisha Lim
Postdoctoral Researcher, SAFELab, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice
Muna-Udbi Abdulkadir Ali
Assistant Professor, York University Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change
Siva Mathiyazhagan
Associate Director, SAFELab, University of Pennsylvania
RSM Assembly Fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University
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