Tone Walford

Tone Walford (they/them) is an Associate Professor in Anthropology at University College London's Department of Anthropology. Their work bridges anthropology with digital studies, environmental science, and justice frameworks, focusing on how digital data transforms social and cultural practices globally.

Walford's research explores the effects of exponential digital data growth on social and cultural imaginaries. Their doctoral fieldwork examined climate scientists and technicians in the Brazilian Amazon, tracing relationships between scientific digitization practices and their social-political effects. Current research investigates data politics in international observational science and how concepts like 'person,' 'environment,' and 'ownership' are reconfigured in informational landscapes traversing the gaps between expert and civic, neoliberal and grassroots, natural and artificial domains.

Walford's publication record demonstrates consistent scholarly engagement from 2012 through 2024. Their work reveals evolving themes from Amazonian climate science practices to broader theoretical frameworks for understanding data's societal role. Recent publications like 'The Sage Handbook of Data and Society' (2024) and 'Map, Territory, and Everything in Between' (2024) show continued focus on how data shapes territorial politics and environmental governance, particularly examining data justice across different communities worldwide.

As an academic collaborator, Walford has worked extensively across disciplines including environmental science, physics, and data science. Their edited volume 'Lineages and Advancements in Material Culture Studies' (2020) showcases commitment to innovative methodological frameworks that address human experiences requiring new analytical approaches, including digital objects, infrastructure, data, and medical materiality.