Community Data Clinic

Visiting Scholar

Sergio Rodríguez Gómez

Sergio Rodríguez Gómez is a PhD student in Communication, Languages, and Information at Universidad Javeriana, in Bogotá, Colombia. He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign during Spring 2023. His academic interests relate technology, science, and art. His research explores digital humanities —using digital tools to study humanistic topics or studying the digital as a cultural phenomenon—. He uses semiotics as a theoretical scaffolding for understanding artistic thinking and scientific research, and art as a strategy for creative and intellectual exploration —from practices like electronic literature, creative coding, and comics—. His work with the Community Data Clinic centered on digital humanities practices for digital equity, collective memory, and community building. He organized, with UIUC’s Professor Anita Chan and PhD Student Val Arboniés Flores, two events about the uses of archives and creative practices as means of reparations and resistance in Latin America: a speaker event with coordinators from the digital archives of Londres 38 in Chile and the Truth Commission in Colombia —two projects that use archives for creating memory about past and present social conflicts—; and a Zine Workshop with students and professors from UIUC. In the Workshop they produced a DIY publication around the current context of the university, following the inspiration of the Whole University Catalog published in this same context in the seventies.