Critical modelling establishes a discursive site for reflecting on the constructed and transactional nature of our epistemic objects in relation to the critical vocabulary and infrastructure of knowledge-making. Rather than conceiving of models as a prefiguration of real-existing data worlds, a normative reification of an assumed literary (poly-)system, or a descriptive object ontology of a historical reality conceived as an ideational whole, this insight conceives of critical modelling as a scholarly practice that is enacted beyond representation and actively participates in the making of a space of intelligibility through processes of materialisation and instantiation of concepts and research questions with data.