Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2025 9:00 AM - Fri, 12 Sep 2025 5:00 PM
Organiser: Cambridge Digital Humanities
The Social Data School (SDS)delivers hands-on training that equips participants with the skills and knowledge necessary to conduct data-driven investigations in the public interest. This iteration focusses on the material and societal impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Together with an expert-led teaching team, participants will explore the infrastructure which underpins data-driven platforms, including data centres, supply chains, networks, mineral extraction, e-waste landfills, chip factories and data models.
The Social Data School (SDS)delivers hands-on training that equips participants with the skills and knowledge necessary to conduct data-driven investigations in the public interest. This iteration focusses on the material and societal impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Together with an expert-led teaching team, participants will explore the infrastructure which underpins data-driven platforms, including data centres, supply chains, networks, mineral extraction, e-waste landfills, chip factories and data models.
We will consider:
- What are these structures?
- Where are they located?
- How do they work?
- What is their social and environmental impact?
Through theory and practice, the cohort will investigate what kind of methods and processes support the analysis of these structures and their entangled movements of data, materials and human workers.
We welcome applications from individuals working in the media, academia, civil society organisations, trade unions, the public sector and industry. We will take participants through the fundamental stages of research, from formulating a research project to designing methods, understanding methodology, data collection, pre-processing, techniques such as social network analysis, data visualisation and presentation.
The Social Data School balances foundational skills with real-world applications of interest to different sectors and themes. Critical thinking about data, including bias, reliability, sustainability, human rights, and the construction of ethics, will be supported through project-based exercises and short talks from researchers within and beyond the University of Cambridge.
Along with leading academic researchers and practitioners, the School’s intensive in-person teaching programme will be structured around the lifecycle of a project, exploring the methods used to create, visualise, and analyse digital data. The Data School Team has created a teaching and learning experience which incorporates lectures, digital tools demonstrations, workshops, group work and more. Through this varied programme, participants will not only develop their technical skills but also engage with critical questions about data in society.
Previous participants have benefitted from the practical way digital methods are applied to real problems, the critical way in which they are employed, as well as from the interactions with teachers and peers during a week of activities.
