University of Toronto

Repair, Infrastructure & Sustainability

Workstation of a typical low-fidelity neighborhood repair shop. The repairer was sitting before a computer screen, the wall behind the screen hung his shop’s ad
The workstation of a neighbourhood repair shop in Dhaka. From Data Repair (CHI 2026, Best Paper Honorable Mention).

Behind every digital device is an infrastructure of repairers, recyclers, networks, and workers — much of it informal and invisible, especially in the Global South. We study the knowledge, care, and labour that keep technology working, and the inequalities in who gets connected and on what terms.

Our work ranges from ethnographies of repair shops and e-waste communities to systems that make the web faster in developing regions.

Repair, E-waste, and Care

(a) One of the high-fidelity repair outlets among a cluster of small computer shops inside the Dhaka Multiplan Center. It has a small yellow Bengali signboard r
(a) Inside a data recovery lab, shelves are filled with hundreds of labeled hard drives that serve as donor parts for recovered data. On the workbench, multiple
Left: a high-fidelity repair outlet in Dhaka's Multiplan Center. Right: inside a data recovery lab, with shelves of hard drives kept as donor parts. From Data Repair.

A six-month ethnography with data repairers in Bangladesh, Data Repair (CHI 2026, Best Paper Honorable Mention), shows how this work is constrained not only by scarce machinery and software but by cross-language learning resources and the protective way repairers document and share their experience. The Breaking Hand (CHI 2019, Best Paper Honorable Mention) follows the knowledge, care, and suffering of e-waste recyclers in Dhaka, and environmental-health work measured e-waste dismantlers' exposure to flame retardants.

Repair looks different far from cities. Trust and Technology Repair Infrastructures (CSCW 2019, Diversity and Inclusion Award) studies remote fishing and farming villages in the Philippines, and Pandemic, Repair, and Resilience (COMPASS 2021) documents how COVID-19 disrupted repair and recycling in Bangladesh.

Related papers

Connectivity and Digital Infrastructure

Figure from "Others’ Images: Online Social Media, Architectural Improvisations, and Spatial Marginalization in Bangladesh"
(b) ifttt.com MAML page
Left: from Others' Images (CHI 2020). Right: a webpage rebuilt with MAML for faster loading in developing regions (WWW 2025).

Mobile broadband is the main way people in the Global South get online, yet its quality is poorly measured. Measuring the Unmeasured (SIGCOMM 2026 poster) shows how existing measurement renders marginalized communities invisible. MAML (WWW 2025) works towards a faster web for users on low-end devices and limited bandwidth, whose experience suffers from webpages bloated with third-party CSS and JavaScript.

Infrastructure is social and spatial too. We have studied privacy vulnerabilities in public digital service centers in Dhaka, the program and policy landscape for sustainable ICTD in Bangladesh, and, in Others' Images (CHI 2020, Best Paper Honorable Mention), how online fame drives residents to remodel their homes after Western images, with consequences for urban space.

Related papers

Work and Platforms in the Global South

The road towards kalyanpur slum. City authorities wanted to construct a wider road by demolishing the shops and other temporary structures that were flanking th
Chameli (pseudoname) showing her water bill from the city authority (DWASA).
Fieldwork in Kalyanpur, Dhaka, from Resilient Hope (COMPASS 2025), alongside Ishtiaque Ahmed's CHIWORK talk on low-paid contractual jobs on mobile in the Global South.

Platforms reshape work in the Global South in ways that research centred on the Global North can miss. In Bangladesh, Uber car owners are often not the drivers, and the tensions between them (CSCW 2021) shape ridesharing. We have also studied the strategies of Facebook microcelebrities (ICTD 2022) and how funders incorporate community voices into development programs (ICTD 2022).

Three years of ethnographic work with internally displaced people in Dhaka's Mohakhali and Kalyanpur areas, Resilient Hope (COMPASS 2025), conceptualizes hope in relation to displacement, marginalization, and resistance.

Related papers