Title: Rapid Response Research in Data Science and the Humanities
Many years after the rise of computational approaches to data started filtering out of Computer Science and Engineering departments, most institutions in North America have attracted various forms of related talent to their libraries, departments and centers to help build capacity for broader computational approaches at the institutional level. What happens when that talent begins to collaborate across institutions at a massive scale? Or intra-institutionally guided by their own collaborative light outside established and unflinching reward mechanisms? In this presentation, Dr. Alex Gil will argue for a form of rapid organization of academic research that can effectively draw from our inter-disciplinary, collective talent pool in data science, the humanistic disciplines, and adjacent formations. Using several specific case studies, including the most recent Torn Apart/Separados effort, the idea of a nimble tent, of a mobilized research collective, will emerge as a possible bridge between the long-game of scholarship, and the short-game of relevant data ethics in the now.
Short bio:
Dr. Alex Gil is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Columbia University Libraries. He collaborates with faculty, students and library professionals leveraging computational and network technologies in humanistic research, pedagogy and knowledge production. He is founder and co-director of the Butler Studio at Columbia University Libraries, a tech-light library innovation space focused on digital scholarship and pedagogy; co-founder and moderator of Columbia’s Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities, a vibrant trans-disciplinary research cluster focused on experimental humanities.
