Wendy Hui Kyong Chun will examine how the concept of the network resonates across all disciplines in a lecture, “Critical Data Studies: The Case of Proxy Politics,” Wednesday, April 25, at 4:30 p.m. in the Guerlac Room of A.D. White House with a reception to follow. Presented by Cornell Media Studies, the event is free and the public is invited.

Chun, professor of modern culture and media at Brown University, will argue that although there are strong interdisciplinary projects in network theory across the quantitative social sciences and physical, biological and computational sciences, bridges need to be built between qualitative and quantitative theories to tackle difficult problems.

“By thinking together,” she says, “we can question default assumptions in all our disciplines and work toward building a more sustainable future.”

Chun has studied systems design engineering and English literature, which she combines in her current work on digital media. She is the author of “Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics,” “Programmed Visions: Software and Memory” and “Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media,” and co-editor of “New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader.”

She has co-edited special issues of American Literature, “New Media and American Literature,” and Camera Obscura, “Race and/as Technology.” She was a 2016 Guggenheim fellow, an American Council of Learned Societies and American Academy of Berlin fellow, and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a Wriston fellow at Brown University.

The event is co-sponsored by the Society for the Humanities.