Anne Alexander

By Anne Alexander

Ahead of the CDH Social Data School application Q&A on May 4, Dr Anne Alexander, Director of Learning at Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH), explains how the programme provides the digital research tools necessary for the data-driven world.

The world we live in has long been shaped by the proliferation of data – companies, governments and even our fellow citizens all collect and create data about us every day of our lives.

Much of our communications are relayed digitally, the buildings we live in and the urban spaces we pass through have been turned into sensors, we work, play and even sleep with our digital devices. Particularly over the past year, as the pandemic has dramatically reduced in-person interactions for many, the data overload has come to seem overwhelming.

The CDH Social Data School (June 16-29) which Cambridge Digital Humanities is organising in collaboration with the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy is aimed at people working with data in the media, NGOs and civil society organisations and in education who want to equip themselves with new skills in designing and carrying out digital research projects, but who don’t enjoy easy access to education in data collection, management and analysis.

We want to make available the methods of inquiry and the technical skills we teach to students and staff at the University of Cambridge to a much wider audience.

This year’s CDH Social Data School will include modules exploring the ethical and societal implications of new applications in Machine Learning, with a specific focus on the problems of structural injustice which permeate the computer vision techniques underpinning technologies such as facial recognition and image-based demographic profiling.

We are keen to hear from participants whose work supports public interest journalism, human rights advocacy, trade unionism and campaigns for social justice, environmental sustainability and the decolonisation of education.

Although criticism of the deployment of these technologies is now much more widespread than in the past, it often focuses on the problems with specific use cases rather than more general principles.

In the CDH Social Data School we will take a “bottom-up” approach by providing an accessible introduction to the technical fundamentals of machine learning systems, in order to equip participants with a better understanding of what can (and usually does) go wrong when such systems are deployed in wider society.

We will also engage with these ideas through an experimental approach to learning, giving participants access to easy-to-use tools and methods allowing them to pose the questions which are most relevant to their own work.

Participants are not expected to have any prior knowledge of programming to take part – familiarity with working with basic office tools such as spreadsheets will be helpful. We will be using free or open source software to reduce barriers to participation.

We are particularly interested in applications from participants from countries, communities and groups which suffer from under-resourcing, marginalization and discrimination.

We are keen to hear from participants whose work supports public interest journalism, human rights advocacy, trade unionism and campaigns for social justice, environmental sustainability and the decolonisation of education.

The CDH Social Data School will run online from June 16-29.

Apply now for the CDH Social Data School 2021