Studying the Fog Ahead…

This is Data Diaries, a collection of notes from a realist researcher navigating messy realities in a rapidly changing world. It is where I share the questions that keep me up at night, and sometimes, the data that tries to answer them (badly). I am a critical realist, who do not just ask what’s happening. I like to find out why, how, and what structures are quietly making it all worse (or occasionally better). My research explores how today’s techno-socio-environmental chaos affects young people -especially students- who are expected to “adapt” to the future while no one is entirely sure what that future even is. Through systems thinking, I am interested in how we can better prepare them not just to survive uncertainty, but to thrive by challenging and changing it.

I am also poking at a strange phenomenon: the Dunning-Kruger effect in the age of Generative AI. If people suddenly think they are experts after one chatbot conversation, are we going to witness a new wave of confident confusion?

Data Diaries is where I unpack those questions, challenge the status quo, and remind myself (and others) that academia should be a place to interrogate injustice, not accessorize it with citations.