Rob Kitchin is a professor and ERC Advanced Investigator in the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, for which he was director between 2002 and 2013. He has published widely across the social sciences, including 21 books and over 130 articles and book chapters. He is editor of the international journals, Progress in Human Geography and Dialogues in Human Geography, and for eleven years was the editor of Social and Cultural Geography. He was the editor-in-chief of the 12 volume, International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, and edits two book series, Irish Society and Key Concepts in Human Geography. His book Code/Space (with Martin Dodge) won the Association of American Geographers Meridian Book Award for the outstanding book in the discipline in 2011 and a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2011 award from the American Library Associatio

The book skilfully engages with debates from across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences in order to produce a critical account of how data are enmeshed into enormous social, economic, and political changes that are taking place. It challenges us to rethink data, information and knowledge by asking - who benefits and who might be left out; what these changes mean for ethics, economy, surveillance, society, politics; and ultimately, whether big data offer answers to big questions. By tackling the promises and potentials as well as the perils and pitfalls of our data revolution, Kitchin shows us that data doesn’t just reflect the world, but also changes it.--Dr. Mark Graham