A project focusing on identifying and mitigating biases in data creation within the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Hosted at Huygens Institute & International Institute of Social History. Funded by the Thematic Digital Competence Centre Social Sciences & Humanities (TDCC-SSH).
๐ข NEW BLOG POST | Prisoners of the (written and accessible) Past: Reflections on Bias in the Dutch East India Company Historianโs Craft
In this blog post, Manjusha Kuruppath examines the several forms of bias that a researcher encounters in the written archive.
Read it here! โก๏ธ https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/news/historicalbias/
๐ข NEW BLOG POST | Our colleague Renate Smit provides a great overview of the successful proceedings at the Colonial Archives and Meaningful Digital Infrastructures Symposium in January 2025. The Symposium was co-organised by Combatting Bias, GLOBALISE, IISG Resisting Enslavement, and the Radboud Institute for Culture & History, and followed by Matthias van Rossumโs inaugural lecture๐๐
Read it here! โก๏ธ https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/news/meaningfulinfrastructuresforcolonialarchives/
(Note: the blog post has been cross-posted from Globalise's website)
DANS delivered a guest lecture at the University of Amsterdam on depositing interviews and oral history data into the DANS Data Station for Social Sciences and Humanities. These insights and methodologies are now available on Zenodo, helping researchers improve their understanding of oral history in academia. Access the resources here ๐ https://buff.ly/4k9dhnd #OralHistory #DataManagement
๐ ETHICAL COMMITMENTS | Accountability is a core part of responsible research. We have published our Ethical Commitments - aligned with Combatting Biasโ mission - as one way to keep ourselves accountable for the work we are producing.
โก๏ธ Read them here: https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/about/ethicalcommitments/
We're curious, how do you keep yourself accountable? ๐ก
Weโre always open for further comments, questions, and feedback - contact us! https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/contact/contact/
Today, Iโm in The Hague where the #FAIRfest celebrates the conclusion of the #EOSC projects #FAIRIMPACT and #FAIRCORE4EOSC
๐ข NEW BLOG POST | ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ณ๐น๐ฒ๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ผ๐ป ๐๐ถ๐ฎ๐: ๐๐ฒ๐๐๐ผ๐ป๐ ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ผ๐บ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฎ ๐๐ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ
When working with data, what's missing can be as important as what's recorded. Through a museum installation about the Dutch East India Company, Lodewijk Petram explores how datasets reflect institutional priorities and shape narratives.
Read it here! โก๏ธ https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/news/voc_bias/
#๐ฏ๐น๐ผ๐ด #๐ฏ๐ถ๐ฎ๐ #๐ฑ๐ฎ๐๐ฎ #๐ฑ๐ฎ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ #๐ต๐ถ๐๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ #๐ธ๐ป๐ผ๐๐น๐ฒ๐ฑ๐ด๐ฒ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป
After the symposium you are invited to attend the inaugural lecture of Matthias van Rossum (in Dutch): De โjongensโ van Bontekoe? Over nut en noodzaak van mondiale geschiedenissen van kolonialisme en arbeid.
Start at 15.45 in the Aula (Comeniuslaan 2, Nijmegen). This is a few minutes' walking distance. Separate registration is required: https://www.ru.nl/over-ons/agenda/oratie-professor-matthias-van-rossum.
Save the date in your calendars! โ๏ธ
The symposium 'Colonial Archives and Meaningful Digital Infrastructure' will address the opportunities and challenges of archives and archiving practices within the digital sphere. This will be explored and discussed through a variety of perspectives, respresenting researchers, cultural heritage experts, archivists, and communities.
Hope to see you there!๐
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tickets-colonial-archives-and-meaningful-digital-infrastructure-1111456338829
Dear computer vision researchers, students and practitioners ๐ ๐๐
Remi Denton and I have written what I consider to be a pretty comprehensive paper on the harms of computer vision systems reported to date, from different angles, and how people have proposed addressing them, from many angles.
As we say in the introduction, this isnโt a paper from the lens of fairness in machine learning, although we touch on those works a little bit.
โถ๏ธ Link for PDF: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/wc2kmxvk/revamp/79776912203edccc44f84d26abed846b9b23cb06.pdf
Congratulations to @timnitGebru for being awarded the 2025 Miles Conrad Awardee!
"The award recognizes her critical work on the dangers of biases in AI as the information community grapples with ethics and rapidly advancing technologies."
Dr. Gebru will deliver the Miles Conrad Lecture at #NISOPlus25.
https://niso.plus/2024/12/dr-timnit-gebru-to-receive-the-2025-miles-conrad-award/
In the scope of the Globalise project we've worked on automatic language identification of letters that were shipped back home by the VOC (East India Company) from 1610 to 1796, as preserved by the National Archive. They've been digitised, and automatically transcribed. While the vast majority is in Dutch (unsurprisingly), there are some notable and beautiful exceptions. My colleague has just published a blog post on it: https://globalise.huygens.knaw.nl/the-languages-of-globalise/
๐ข NEW BLOG POST | 'I' am here! The necessity of acknowledging the historian in scholarship.
Kicking off our new series on positionality and bias! Through personal reflections, our team explores how acknowledging our own perspectives leads to stronger, more transparent scholarship.
Team member Amber has written the first blog, reflecting on her experiences (and challenges) with positionality.
Read it here! https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/news/positionality/
Like last year, the flash talks at the #ODISSEI2024 conference are providing a handy overview of tools and services available for #socialscience researchers in NL. Shoutout to the SoDa team @odissei_soda, nice flash talk by Erik-Jan van Kesteren @erikjan
The Dutch government's proposed budget cuts threaten to limit international students and staff, reduce English-taught programs, and slash funding. This will harm Dutch universities, research, and society!
Vecht, vecht, vecht! Studeren is een recht! โ
We are live! The website with all* workshop and talk abstracts is now online:
https://reproducibilitynetwork.nl/abstracts-2024/
We are looking forward to discussing the Future of Reproducibility with you!
*almost all - we are updating the website as the last abstracts come in
#reproducibleResearch #researchIntegrity #openScience #CommunityBuilding #ResearchCulture #NLRN2024
10 December - The ODISSEI conference seeks to bring together a community of computational social scientists to discuss #data, methods, infrastructure, ethics and theoretical work related to digital and computational approaches in social science #research
Join the DANS session 'The Next Generation of Data Management with Artificial Intelligence' and 'Improving the Transparency of Data Access Procedures', and visit us on the marketplace.
Register here ๐ edu.nl/ga6wm
A Guide for Creating and Documenting Language Datasets with Data Statements Schema Version 3 (McMillan-Major & Bender, 2024) is now available!
https://techpolicylab.uw.edu/data-statements/
Data Statements schema version 3 builds on McMillan-Major's 2023 dissertation Language Dataset Documentation Design: Learning from Deaf and Indigenous Communities. The updated guide serves as both a resource for writing data statements and as an aid for planning data collection.
Weโre creating a diverse and collaborative resource list on bias in data practices. Access and contribute to it here! ๐
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17mAClY06JuPQm9qf3Z7ZmdYi08VrZboCUTOv27J6J-E/edit?usp=sharing
๐ค Have thoughts on:
- Resources we should include?
- Smart ways to organize this material?
- Making this more collaborative?
โก๏ธ Get involved! Comment or email us: combattingbias[at]gmail[dot]com ๐ง
โน For more information on our motivations and challenges: https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/news/resourcelist/
The Combatting Bias project was successfully kicked-off a month ago! ๐ The coming year, we will be looking at the role of bias in dataset creation and its mitigation:
๐ Balancing openness vs sensitivity
๐ Effective documentation
๐ Including diverse perspectives
To read more about these, please take a look at our blogpost: https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/News/Kickoff/
