Datafication is transforming the digital experience and spaces which were the base of social fabric. In spite of the positive discourses on this emergent phenomenon, the negative nuances require urgent awareness and action. Open Education and pedagogies could support data literacy as a driver of societal transformation towards the appropriation of the datafied public spaces. Therefore, HE, and mostly, public universities could play a key role in fostering critical approaches to knowledge production and the phenomenon of datafication in the society. In time, this would contribute to shape informed and transformative democratic practices and dialogue empowering citizens to address social justice concerns. However, this envisioned strategy requires faculty development and engagement. In Higher Education Institutions, fostering data literacies requires of disciplinary and pedagogical efforts to innovate in curricular design to design learning activities, using a research based learning approach. Despite the growing phenomenon of datafication at society and educational level, there is a lack of documentation on academic development in data literacies. There is a growing number of studies on teachers’ data literacy relating teachers’ skills to deal with school data, particularly to analyze the school performance and supporting school management, but a critical approach which enacts teachers and students to deal with data seems to be weakly represented in the literature. In this workshop, the authors open a discussion to think about “data activism” as a mean support faculty’s awareness and practices aimed at shaping critical and ethical approaches to data, in all its forms and usages, in education. The workshop was presented at the Open Education Conference 2019, Milan, 26-28 November 2019. Details here: https://oeglobal2019.sched.com/event/ULXM