Roopika Risam

@roopikarisam.bsky.social

10021 Followers 2007 Following

Author of DATA EMPIRE (Harper & Torva, July 2026), Chair of Film & Media Studies at Dartmouth 💚, equestrian🐴, https://roopikarisam.com

UK and US cover and "Don't miss the audiobook, read by award-winning narrator Soneela Nankani"
Behind the ears of a chestnut mare, looking at a girl riding a black horse
Standee for Moana
Me in the New & Noteworthy section of Barnes and Noble, holding DATA EMPIRE
The crow
Data Empire, from ancient Mesopotamia to artificial intelligence, a global history of how data came to shape our world and the US and UK covers
Dear Professor Risam, I hope you don't mind me emailing you out of the blue. I recently came across you and your work which sounds completely fascinating and original. I am getting in touch as I was wondering if you had a literary agent, and whether you were interested in writing trade books based on your research, such as your vital work on how we turn a cultural record of humanity into a digital record of humanity. After several years working on mostly history and politics books at Penguin Press and Bloomsbury in the UK, I joined the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency a year ago, to continue to champion voices that are expanding public knowledge and debate. I am very interested in representing academics who are at the forefront of their fields, especially those whose work touches on colonialism and empire. I would love to learn more about your research, and discuss with you the possibility of working together. Ilook forward to hearing from you. All the best, Emma
Data Empire Roopika Risam As a society, we use data to predict, control, and manage our existence. From tax records to the weather, we collect and collate information that is also power. In this NPR Summer Reading pick professor Roopika Risam argues that this process began at the very dawn of civilization, and very quickly morphed from an effort to understand the world - by tracking seasons, crops, and other environmental data points - to an ability to maintain power over populations. This ability has been refined throughout the centuries until modern-day computing power rendered it almost omniscient and omnipotent, in control of every aspect of our lives. Library Journal calls Data Empire "a sweeping and convincing argument that information undergirds power." Release date: July 14
The Agent NO FIGURE HAS been more significant, and yet more invisible, in American literature than the literary agent. Best known for representing an author's interests in a book deal, the agent is an author's legal representative and fiduciary, responsible for submitting their work to publishers, negotiating the sale, and managing a writer's career in the long term. A good agent will help her author navigate the circuitous path to publica-tion; a great agent becomes her author's friend, confidante, and coach— genuine collaborators in a creative process. But beyond what is suggested by this simple catalog of services rendered, agents exercise a great deal of influence over the literary marketplace, blending literary taste
Laura McGrath’s Middlemen
Table of books, with Data Empire upright in the middle
Pile of books
Cave art from Lascaux on a poster
CHAPTER 1 THE FIRST ACCOUNTANTS, C.9000-1700 BCE How early data for everyday survival evolved into an instrument of rule A heart which does not know accounting - is that a wise heart? -Sumerian proverb
My hand holding Data Empire
#1 hot new releases in history on Amazon.co.uk
Noah Kahan on stage
Supergirl poster
"The first human name recorded in written history was an accountant. This book explores the idea that data is power and always has been. From early human history through our present day, in which the power brokers of data are rapidly changing, this is an eye-opening look at our past, and our future."
Teenage girl reading book
“The framework of our world”: 1929, Breakneck, Data Empire, Peak Human, the Elements of Power
Black horse head
Aziz Ansari on stage
Cover of Data Empire and five stars for critics’ consensus
Marquis for The Outsiders
Marquis for Death of a Salesman
Titanique curtain call
Bazaar Bookshelf featuring Data Empire
Côte d’Ivoire fans in Times Square
And also I commented to [redacted] about how the book has a lot of sentence structure I recognized from my own writing that made perfect sense since the same people taught us how to write but still amused me. All these assholes think dashes mean "written by Al" and not just "my thoughts are large and thus so are my sentences."
Marquis for Giant
Two men in kilts walking down the street
Subject: Roopika Risam, Predicate: is the author, Object: Data Empire
"Data EMPIRE by ROOPIKA RISAM Data has shaped civilisation since it began. Now as trading information for access to services is the norm, the book focuses on teh value of data and the power of protecting it. Out on 9 July"
Me, Jed Dobson, and Reina Mosteirin in regalia
Scott Conant on stage
A row of horses in a field
The committee began its work in September of 2025. In the initial phase we compiled detailed internal reports on what we take to be a representative sample of disciplines in these areas: philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, literary studies and music studies. These reports were the result of extensive research on the part of the authors in consultation with experts in fields unrepresented on the committee, with the indispensable assistance of Gavin Cook and Yu Guo, who developed tools for gathering and analyzing data relevant to the work of the committee.' These internal reports form the basis for the general report to follow, which is signed by all members of the committee.
In Data Empire, Risam offers a sweeping 43,000-year history of how data has functioned as the "seed of power." From Mesopotamian clay tablets used for grain accounting to the sophisticated algorithms of the modern state, Risam argues that information has always been a technology of control. The book is organized into three great eras: the ancient origins of record-keeping, the age of European imperial expansion-when censuses and ledgers were used to dominate 80 percent of the world-and our current era of "algorithmic states" and mass surveillance. Risam's sharpest critique focuses on how human lives are currently being reduced to quantifiable assets by technological giants and governments, often at the expense of civil liberties. Both a historical survey and a call to action, this work challenges readers to imagine digital resistance in a world defined by corporate and state extraction. Data Empire is essential for historians, digital humanities scholars, and social activists. It will also appeal to readers interested in understanding technology's role in global power dynamics and the ethics of big data. - Dominic J. Caraccilo
Behind the ears view of the woods
Me and a student
Email from Duolingo subject line “nobody ignores me… for long”
Horse with a braided mane
Now their successors operate at a magnitude those companies could not have fathomed. The capacity to know populations, move armies, allocate resources, and decide fates no longer rests primarily with the state. It lives in code maintained by private firms, in infrastructures scattered across continents, in platforms that mediate the world's speech and si-lence. The keepers of these systems do not inherit territory; they inherit dependency from states that cannot function without them.
The Boss
The Mandalorian and Grogu standee
PS: I got promoted to full too
Over the next several thousands of years, residents of communities in Iraq and Iran began creating cones, spheres, and pyramids of clay, firing them in brick kilns for durability. Distinct shapes connoted different kinds of products, like grains, fats, and livestock. Once humans realized that data could be used to manage their resources or figure out how many mouths there were to feed, they were truly ready to accommodate populations that were growing in size. The movement from simple discs to more diverse figures reflected the growing complexity of their societies. A transition in ways of living required new forms of data. Well before the emergence of civilization, these communities had developed a durable method of data creation and transmission to support their more settled lifestyle. Necessity was the mother of data. In ancient Mesopotamia, as early as 7500 BCE, traders encoded commerce data with clay molded into shapes and marked with lines and dots. Used for accounting, the tokens represented quantities of goods. Around 3500 BCE, ancient
Cast of Proof with Don Cheadle
Chess marquis
Butter in NYC
A couch with a Dartmouth pillow and a plushie of a mushroom
Poster and programs
"Here is the new history of mankind demanded by our times. We can understand our past, going all the way back to our emergence as a species, as a struggle over data. Data used to turn into power through intermediaries like money and politics, but now it does so more directly. Humanity was forced to enact reforms to make money and politics survivable. This book asks what we will do about data now that we have no choice but to do something" -Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, founder of virtual reality and author of Who Owns the Future?
"If data is the new oil, then Roopika Risam's Data Empire can stand next to Daniel Yergin's epic history of oil, The Prize, as a fascinating tale of how data slowly became the most consequential commodity in our world" - Jonathan Taplin, Author of Move Fast and Break Things and the End of Reality
Me and a black horse in a green field
A sidewalk of wet concrete with a fence, caution tape, and cones, after I fell in.
Reviews - my book is the day’s featured review