Just Knowledge: Data Democracy in Action

This week’s podcast is a little different. It is a live recording at Ratio’s home in Somerset House with Celestin Okoroji and Jolyon Miles-Wilson, founders of the research centre Just Knowledge. Ratio has incubated Just Knowledge in its first year, although as I note in my introduction, with two Wellcome grants to their name I am beginning to feel as if they are incubating me. It is a good feeling!

Celestin and Jolyon are technically gifted, but their work is also fundamental to how we navigate the changing world of machines and data. Bottom line, Celestin and Jolyon are seeking to put data into the hands of people in the communities from which the data are drawn. They see people in datasets as the best people to interpret data, and advise on the policy implications. It is a radical position. And it is fundamental to the relationship between state, civil society and capital that has emerged as a dominant theme in Ratio’s work.

In the conversation Celestin and Jolyon refer to several studies and data sets. They include:

* their paper on Stop and Search data

* the publicly accessible dataset generated by their work

* a report on their ⁠work in Northumberland Park, North London

* The residents of Northumberland Park made a submission to the planning process based on Just Knowledge’s work. There is a discussion in the podcast about this response of Haringey Council. You can find the councils response here. The DM Final Officer Report Document dated 12/12/2025 is the relevant document.

Celestin made an error attributing a report for Tottenham Hotspur to McKinsey when, in fact, it was prepared by EY. The report is available here.

Special thanks to Nik Paget-Tomlinson who recorded the event and engineered the podcast, and to our home at Somerset House for providing such a wonderful venue for the event.