Jackie Ashkin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University. She is part of the ERC project FluidKnowledge, led by Prof. Dr. Sarah de Rijcke, where she examines data and computing practices in ocean research, following the development and use of numerical models in predicting and planning potential coastal futures.

More information about Jackie Ashkin

Jackie Ashkin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University. She is part of the ERC project FluidKnowledge, led by Prof. Dr. Sarah de Rijcke. Jackie is an ethnographer of marine science. Her research examines computational practices—especially numerical modelling—in the making of knowledge about the coastal ocean in the Netherlands. She investigates these practices within the dual contexts of scientific research and environmental governance.

She illustrates how entanglements between material, epistemic, and institutional concerns come to constitute what and how we know about coastal futures through numerical modelling practices. In dialogue with critiques of environmental quantification and the datafication of nature, she explores what makes numerical models of the coastal ocean ‘do-able’ given constraints ranging from the challenges of fieldwork to data availability to supercomputer access to publication pressure. She also looks at emerging technologies touted to be the future of marine governance, such as digital twinning. This work is grounded in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and enriched by insights from environmental anthropology and human geography.

Jackie has previously served as the chair of Leiden’s PhD Association, LEO (2020-2022) and as PhD representative to the WTMC board (2019-2021).

She received her M.A.(Hons, First Class) in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in 2018.