Jason C. Lau

Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow
Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto

I study how algorithmic systems govern — and are contested — through uncertainty.

I am an anthropologist of Chinese technology. Between 2013 and 2020 I did ethnographic fieldwork in mainland China and Hong Kong: first with the people who build technology, in Shenzhen’s phone workshops and the design worlds around them; then with the people algorithmic systems govern.

My paper “Governance Through Uncertainty,” published at the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, names what that fieldwork revealed: algorithmic systems can govern not despite their opacity but through it. I am now writing the book.

• The paper — ACM FAccT ’26, Montreal · June 2026
• The essay — the argument in public form · July 2026
• Research program — the book, current work, earlier work