Nat Arslan

I started out in journalism, with a master’s degree focused on data journalism. That’s where I discovered how maps can both reveal and obscure and how much power lies in the way we visualize the world. After that, I spent a few months cataloguing old maps and nature illustrations for an antique shop, which deepened my fascination with how knowledge travels through images and archives.

Curiosity pulled me further into geomatics and remote sensing, leading to another master’s degree. At the Swedish Board of Agriculture, I worked as a satellite image analyst, where I developed a method to group pixels and extract meaningful statistics for machine-learning models. This method aimed to predict poor crop growth caused by weather events like flooding or frost, without relying on noisy per-pixel data.

Now, I’m a PhD researcher at KTH’s Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. Currently I’m exploring the history of satellite technologies that make it possible to observe and understand climate change, focusing on the often-hidden labor and infrastructures behind them.

I’m a self-taught Python enthusiast, a fan of both black-and-white digital and 35 mm film photography, and an occasional haiku writer (though not as often as I’d like).