Burcu Baykurt

My writing and research examine technologies of statecraft from smart cities to tech nationalism to the use of automated decision systems in public agencies. 

My first book, Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed Urbanism (University of California Press, 2026), takes readers into Kansas City, Missouri, where Google piloted a citywide gigabit network and city officials launched several smart city projects in the 2010s. The book reframes test-bed urbanism as a mode of local governance that works through civic aspiration, deliberate ignorance, and municipal politics. It argues that urban disparities are not an unintended consequence of the smart city; they are the foundation upon which it is built.

My current research follows gov-tech companies and public officials to understand what they think they are buying and selling when government data infrastructures are layered with proprietary software and government datasets circulate in data markets.

I have published in Information, Communication & Society, Big Data & Society, New Media & Society, and Urban Studies among others. I co-edited Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st Century Global Order (Columbia University Press, 2021) with Victoria de Grazia. 

On campus, I convene the Ethnography Collective and have co-founded the Global Technology for Social Justice (GloTech) Lab.

Ph.D. Columbia University

Undergraduate: Sidewalks and Screens; Social Life of Algorithms

Graduate: Media Theories; Ethnography of the Digital

Please visit http://baykurt.org for an updated list of publications.