about me

hi! my name is derya

pronounced in english: dairy-ya
pronouns in english: she/her/hers

thinking about…

• missing data
• participatory methods
• the invisible infrastructure of language
• hanging out with my cat Fig

present

✏ KTH Royal Institute of Technology

✉ akbaba at kth dot se

📖 i like books

💾 a list of lists about data vis

let’s work together!

research is fun when it is done together ✶⋆.˚
I am open to: collaborating, chit-chatting, and supervising topics on:
 ⊹ ࣪˖ participatory VIS & HC(A)I
⋆˚࿔ data physicalization
  ✮⋆˙input visualizations
₊⊹ visualization theory
 ⋆𖦹⭒ feminist vis
and other topics at the intersection of tech x society more broadly

past

⋆｡ PhD, Computing (Media & Information Technology) @ Linköping Univeristy, VID lab, WASP Funded, 2025

☼ Masters, Computing @ U. of Utah, VDL lab, 2022

☃ BSc, Industrial & Labor Relations @ Cornell, 2013

recent work

Here’s what you need to know about my data: Exploring Expert Knowledge’s Role in Data Analysis
Haihan Lin, Maxim Lisnic, Derya Akbaba, Miriah Meyer, Alexander Lex
(to appear) IEEE VIS 2025 Proceedings, 2025
🥛 2025 VIS Honorable Mention
preprint

Bring Your Own Biodata (BYOB): Feminist, Corporeal and Collective Approaches to Datafied Bodies
Beatrice Vincenzi, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Alejandra Gómez Ortega, Kim Sauvé, Laura Forlano, Derya Akbaba, Edda Forero, Samuel Thulin, Pedro Sanches, Kit Kuksenok
Companion Publication of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 2025
workshop

Interaction Design as a Form of Decolonial Care
Tania Villalobos Lujan, Pratim Sengupta, Derya Akbaba, Sofia Alessio-Robles, Amelia Lee Dogan, Monica Meltis, Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, Lora Oehlberg
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2025
workshop

news

Nov 2025 :: the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden

Lots of fun news to share for this autumn! I'll be sharing data vis methods at Mapping as a Social Science Method at Maatricht University. Then off to IEEE VIS conf -- come to the Input Vis Workshop and listen to our Best Paper Honorable Mention talk! Finally, I am starting a new role at KTH Royal Institute as a member of the Co-liberative Computing research group.

Sep 2025 :: Sweden

I successfully defended my PhD on 4 Sept! You can find my thesis, Shifting Perspectives; Conducting Visualization Research with Entanglement Epistemology online.

Jun 2025 :: Finland

Wow! Excited to present 'Care, Craft, & Complexity' at the Visualizing Knowledge Conf! It'll be my first time visiting Finland!