2026 Stapleford Lecture with Dr. Mél Hogan

The Faculty of Arts invites you to attend the 2026 Stapleford Lecture with guest lecturer Dr. Mél Hogan, Film and Media Professor at Queen's University.

This is a talk about the growing resistance to AI data centre proposals in Canada: how data centres became such a hot topic and what it means to push back against them. Canadians are largely opposed to data centres being built (anywhere, but especially in their communities), while many politicians of various stripes are trying to sell the public on AI’s inevitability – and local data centres as a way to ensure ‘data sovereignty’ in times of more obvious and overt big tech fascism. This talk puts forward an idea of resistance through conceiving of AI data centres as ‘data refineries’ to more fully understand them as the processing plants they are, converting our (personal, collective) data into products of value for big tech companies.

About Mél Hogan

Mél Hogan is the host of The Data Fix podcast (thedatafix.net) and Associate Professor in Film & Media at Queen’s University (Canada). Her research has long focused on data centres in the context of planetary catastrophes and our collective anxieties about political futures. She’s published widely on various aspects of “the data centre industrial complex” and enjoys being in conversation about hard topics with the wider public. She’s currently working on a co-authored book called Critical Data Center Studies (Routledge) and a three-volume set of Predictions! (Mattering Press)—and is continuing to research the growing community based resistance to data centres in Canada. You can follow her on Bluesky at @melhogan.bsky.social

Event Details:
Wednesday, November 18, 2026
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Education Auditorium
University of Regina

Free Admission
Free Parking
All Are Welcome

Please reserve your free tickets online to confirm your attendance. For more information, contact: [email protected]