The Making Sense of Urban Air Project is a 4-year research project that uses ethnographic methods to explore how the introduction of Google’s ‘Project Air View’, which measures polluting particles in Copenhagen, has had an impact on definitions and perceptions of ‘air quality’.

Air pollution has long been known tohave adverse health effects, and measuring it more accurately can contribute topublic welfare by optimising both urban planning and citizen behaviour. However,what is seen as air ‘quality’ to different people is in practice located betweenobjective measures, and subjective bodily experiences facilitated through thesenses in everyday life.

The project’s aim is to generate findings that can both theoretically address debates in the qualitative social sciences about how people perceive of and react to data and numbers in relation to how experience is technologically mediated.

The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Danmarks Frie Forskningsråd).