The call for the Digital Methods Winter School 2018 at the University of Amsterdam is out now. This year’s theme is “The Social Lives of Digital Methods: Encounters, Experiments, Interventions”. I was kindly invited by Richard Rogers, Founder of the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam (where I’m also a Research Associate) to help shape the theme and give input to the call. So it is no coincidence that it is very well aligned with many of my current research interests, as well as many recent discussions we’ve been having with colleagues around the Public Data Lab, inspired by our activities around the Field Guide to Fake News; a recent session on digital methods and public policy at the International Conference on Public Policy in Singapore; recent projects in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Milan and Paris, as well as Noortje Marres’s recent book (see below). Further information can be found here. It promises to be a fun and interesting event and hope to see you there!

“The Social Lives of Digital Methods: Encounters, Experiments, Interventions” – Call for Participation in Digital Methods Winter School 2018, University of Amsterdam, 8-12th January 2018

Over the past decade digital methods of various kinds have been put to use by data journalists, national ministries, non-governmental organisations, city governments, media artists, police departments, international organisations, philanthropic funding agencies in the service of a wide variety of projects and objectives. Within the academy digital methods have spread from researchers of the internet, new media and computational culture, leading to encounters and experiments with a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, working with their own publics, partners, questions, concerns and modes of inquiry with and about the digital. That one may intervene with digital methods is clear, but the question concerns the positioning.

Read More »