2026 Ursula Franklin Lecture: Dan Hardt & Nanna Bonde Thylstrup

Computational linguist Daniel Hardt and science and technology studies scholar Nanna Bonde Thylstrup are the invited speakers for the Franklin Lecture at the University of Toronto on Monday, May 11, 2026.

This year’s lecture explores the ontologies of human and machine understanding, with particular attention to what is missing, omitted, or elided, and why such absences are fundamental to meaning and knowledge. Examining ellipsis, loss, and lacuna through the distinct yet intersecting lenses of computational linguistics and science and technology studies, Hardt and Thylstrup consider the politics and ethics of data, machine learning, and digital infrastructures.

Taking seriously the provocation that elisions, ellipses, and loss are fundamental features of human understanding across all registers—and that omitted parts are constitutive of systems of knowledge—the lecture asks whether AI models are capable of this kind of interpretive work. If ellipsis can register embodiment, constraint, and gendered expression, what does it mean to read, interpret, and respond to such dynamics in systems that neither breathe nor inhabit a body?

Named after renowned Canadian physicist, science and technology scholar, and activist Ursula Franklin, the Franklin Lecture annually hosts a scholar or public intellectual whose work has significantly shaped discourse on technology and society. Past lecturers have included Cory Doctorow, McKenzie Wark, Charlton McIlwain, and Jodi Dean.

We hope you will join us for this timely conversation.

About the speakers

Daniel Hardt is an associate professor in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School. His research involves natural language processing, theoretical linguistics, and AI. He holds a Ph.D. in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania and is a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER grant. He has over 70 peer-reviewed publications, and his work has appeared in Computational Linguistics, Linguistics and Philosophy, Journal of Semantics, Language, Linguistic Inquiry, Big Data, Tourism Management, European Journal of Information Systems, and Management Information Systems Quarterly.

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup is an associate Professor in Modern and Digital Culture at the University of Copenhagen and Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Data Loss: The Politics of Disappearance, Destruction and Dispossession in Digital Societies (DALOSS). Her research explores the political and ethical dimensions of data, machine learning, and digital infrastructures, with a particular focus on how loss, erasure, and remains shape the conditions under which knowledge is shaped and encountered.

Working at the intersection of cultural theory, science and technology studies, and critical data and AI studies, she examines how algorithmic processes reconfigure archives, memory, and practices of knowing. She is the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Mass Digitization (MIT Press) and Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for the Age of Big Data (MIT Press), and her work has appeared in journals such as Big Data & Society, Media, Culture & Society, and New Media & Society.

This event is a collaborative effort from the Centre for Culture and Technology, the Centre for the Study of the United States, the Department of Social Justice Education, OISE, Innis College’s Writing and Rhetoric Program, and the Knowledge Media Design Institute.

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