I have a PhD in geography with a specialisation in information science. Currently, I am the head of the Data Science team of EBP in Zurich, Switzerland. From 2013 to 2018, I have been a visiting researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, UK.
I like to combine my curiosity with personal and societal values such as openness and accessibility.
Within the broad topics mentioned above, I am particularly interested in:
as well as the organisational, economical, and political questions that arise from these and related developments.
My portfolio of spare-time data analysis and visualization projects (this space will contain more projects as I get around to documenting them).
Except where noted, publications have been refereed.
Ojanperä S, Graham M, Straumann RK, De Sabbata S & Zook M, 2017, Engagement in the Knowledge Economy: Regional patterns of content creation with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Information Technologies & International Development, 13: 33–51
pdf,
link
Graham M, Straumann RK & Hogan B, 2015, Digital divisions of labour and informational
magnetism: Mapping participation in Wikipedia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(6):
1158–1178
pdf,
link
De Sabbata S, Çöltekin A, Eccles K, Hale S, Straumann RK, 2015, Collaborative visualizations for Wikipedia
critique and activism. Proceedings of ICWSM 2015, Oxford, United Kingdom
pdf
Leiss I, Straumann R & Meyer R, 2015, Nachhaltige Verfügbarkeit und Archivierung von Geodaten.
Konzeptstudie zur koordinierten Umsetzung bei Bund, Kantonen und Gemeinden. SIK-GIS/CSI-SIG
pdf (German),
pdf (French),
link
Graham M, Hogan B, Straumann RK & Medhat A, 2014, Uneven geographies of user-generated information:
Patterns of increasing informational poverty. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(4): 746–764
pdf,
link
Straumann RK, 2013, Python als GIS-Bindemittel: Analyse der Sonnenblendung bei Verkehrsunfällen (abstract).
Proceedings of FOSSGIS 2013, Rapperswil, Switzerland
video
Logean A, Lavrovsky O, Straumann RK & Gassner P, 2012, Sustainability through open data: Examples
from Switzerland. Proceedings of EnviroInfo 2012, Dessau, Germany
pdf
Straumann RK, 2012, Online photo repositories as vehicles of narratives: Stories about Zurich
(workshop paper, abstract-refereed). Proceedings of Cartography
& Narratives Workshop 2012, 106–120, Zurich, Switzerland
pdf
Wider T & Straumann RK, 2012, SwissPeaks – Räumliche Analyse von
Zugriffsstatistiken einer mobilen App(likation). Proceedings of GeoSummit 2012, Bern, Switzerland
link
Straumann RK, 2010, Extraction and characterisation of landforms from Digital Elevation
Models: Fiat parsing the elevation field. PhD thesis, University of Zurich, Department of
Geography
high-quality pdf (66mb),
pdf (22mb),
University of Zurich repository
Purves RS, Gruber S, Straumann RK & Hengl T (eds.), 2009, Proceedings of Geomorphometry 2009,
31 August – 2 September 2009, Zurich, Switzerland
pdf
Straumann RK & Korup O, 2009, Quantifying postglacial sediment storage at the mountain-belt
scale (abstract). Geophysical Research Abstracts, 11, 2009 EGU General Assembly (not refereed)
pdf
Straumann RK, 2006, Sensitivität von Prozessmodellen in Bezug auf die Auflösung
LIDAR-basierter Höhendaten . MSc thesis at the Department of Geography of the University of
Zurich
pdf,
link
“[W]e need to reject the extremely resilient ‘Euclidean’ notions, still implicitly underlying many treatments of the geographies of information technology, that treat spaces and places simply as bounded areas, as definable, Cartesian spatial objects, embedded within some wider, objective framework of time-space.
As Doreen Massey suggests, places need to be defined in relational terms, too, as ‘articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings’ rather than as ‘areas with boundaries around’.”
— Stephen Graham, 1998