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The theme of this year's international Love Data Week is 'Whose Data Is It, Anyway?'

The data landscape has reached an unprecedented scale, yet questions around data sovereignty and ethics are still critical in our appraisal of data usage. The annual Love Data week is a chance for the academic community to take stock and contextualise their use of data within their research community. For Love Data 2025, we’re encouraging people to question “Whose Data Is It, Anyway?”

In addition to the various events taking place internationally, the University of Southampton library’s Research Data Team is excited to announce our main event for Love Data Week 2025. During this event, we will have two extended talks focusing on researchers who have hands on experience with handling sensitive data as well as lightning talks from researchers who are working in this area.

Creating community narratives through research: The ethical use of sensitive data

When: Wednesday 12th February 2025, 14.00-17.00
Where: Room 4011, Building 100, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus

Programme

14.00-14.30:    Coffee and welcome
14.30-15.00:    Keynote Talk: Charlie Knight
15.00-15.30:    Lightning talks: (i) Aybala Cakmakcioglu, Design Archaeology: on the Smartwatch, (ii) Laurisa Sastoque Pabon, CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, (iii) details to follow
15.30-16.00:    Break
16.00-16.30:    Keynote talk: Ben Jarman
16.30-16.45:    Plenary questions

Registration link

The event will be hybrid. If you wish to attend online or in person, please register at https://forms.office.com/e/AaTZuXECxs  

Presenter Notes

Keynote: Charlie Knight

Like most large academic libraries, the Hartley Library at the University of Southampton holds several special collections. One of these is the Anglo-Jewish archive linked to the Parkes Institute at the University. The manuscript collection is devoted to the history of relationships between Jewish and Non-Jewish communities and is one of the largest collections of its kind in Europe. As such, it holds a large volume of potentially sensitive data.

The ethical use of sensitive data from a deceased individual is a nuanced process requiring a careful balance of respect, purpose, transparency, and consideration for the living community connected to the data. In this session for Love Data week 2025, we will hear from a researcher who has handled the ethical considerations of this work, what he learned from the experience, and the outcomes of his research.

Charlie Knight is a PhD candidate at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton. From 2021-24 he was funded by the Wolfson Foundation Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, and is currently a fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute funded by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

During his PhD, Charlie used the papers of Theodor Hirschberg, in archive MS314 within the collection, to inform his work on the correspondence between displaced German-Jewish families during the Second World War. The collection contains personal correspondences between family members and friends and was mostly written after Theodor Hirschberg had arrived in London, spanning a period of 1939-41, and expressing concern for those remaining in Germany as well as attempts to support them.

Charlie has kindly offered to share with us his experience of using these materials and how he integrated the process of handling this sensitive data into his research in an ethical way.

 

Keynote: Ben Jarman

The second half of the event will be led by Ben Jarman, a Research Fellow in the School of Law at the University of Southampton. Ben’s work explores the experiences of long-term prisoners and the moral implications of extreme punishments in the UK. Ben will discuss some ethical considerations arising with qualitative data derived from prison interviews, and consider what implications arise for the Open Data agenda more generally.

 

Lightning Talk: Design Archaeology: on the Smartwatch, Aybala Cakmakcioglu

Aybala Cakmakcioglu is a Teaching Fellow in the Global Advertising and Branding programme at Winchester School of Art. With a background in industrial design and brand communication, Aybala’s research spans digital culture, everyday life, and the philosophy of technology. Her PhD thesis, titled ‘Design Archaeology: on the Smartwatch’ aims to form a holistic understanding of the smartwatch as a contemporary product since it has the potential to reveal the tangled dynamics between people and technology. The research explores present phenomena by benefitting from the past with a design archaeological approach. By exploring recurring patterns and historical parallels, her work offers valuable insights into digital culture by exploring concepts such as quantified self and information discipline.

 

Lightning Talk: CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, Laurisa Sastoque Pabon

Laurisa Sastoque Pabon is Digital Preservation Training Officer in the Digital Humanities Team at the University of Southampton. She will talk about the CARE principles for handling data which were originally proposed for indigenous data but can be useful when dealing with data collection from any marginalised group. Prior to joining the university, Laurisa received an MPhil in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge where her dissertation work was comprised of a digital mapping project on the subject of the Colombian diaspora in the United States and the United Kingdom and the drug trade. Laurisa is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, and has also lived in Evanston, Illinois, where she completed her undergraduate degree in History, Creative Writing, and Data Science (Minor) from Northwestern University. In her spare time, Laurisa enjoys travelling, hanging out at coffee shops, and fantasizing about the dog she will (one day) adopt.

Previous Events

Love Data Week 2024 had the theme "My Kind of Data". We joined in with the various Love Data Week 2024 international events (See Past information section) to learn more about data equity and inclusion, disciplinary communities, and creating a kinder world through data.

Love Data Week 2023 at the University of Southampton was about inspiring our community to use data to bring about changes that matter. This year, we focused on helping new and seasoned researchers by organising a varied series of talks and discussions over the week.

These included:

What you need to know about collecting and sharing your data? Dr Sami Kanza (PhD, Chemistry, 2018) who currently works as a Senior Research Fellow in Chemistry recounted her journeys with data during her PhD folowed by a talk from Isobel Stark, Head of Research Data (Library) reminding staff and PGRs on the training and support that is available from the Research Data team. 

Qualitiatve Data: The Human side of research data. Dr Brian Pickering callied on his years of experience as a researcher and a member of the  Association of Internet Researchers, the Research Data Alliance, the British Psychological Society, and the British Computer Society to deliver a fascinating talk about collecting, analysing and publishing qualitative data and the insights it can bring. 

Panel Discussion on Data: Agent for Change. Isobel Stark - Head of Research Data and IP chaired a panel discussion with the theme Making data as "open as possible and closed as necessary". Profs Christian Bokhove (Education), Marion Demossier (Languages) and Sophie Ferguson, Head of Information Governance discussed what this means to their discipline/professional practice and how research data could be an agent for change.

Datakind:Making Data an agent for change. DataKind UK is a charity which puts into practice this year's theme: Data, agent for Change. Datakind's stated mission is "helps social change organisations use data science to have more of an impact" and they do this by connecting them with some of the UK’s best data scientists for free. Dr Adam Hill talked about the sort of projects that he and others from the University have been involved in.

A tabby and white cat lying on a knitted blanket, with different colour rows representing different temperature ranges

A member of our Research Data team was inspired by the Love Data 2020 data visualisation competition to create a temperature blanket charting the highest daily temperature every day during 2020. Find out more in our blog post Love Data Week 2021: Loving 2020 data.

In 2019, the Library ran a competition for staff and students to explore data visualisation. The challenge was to present Hartley Library entry gate data in a creative, artistic or innovative way.

The pieces you see in the poster below were submitted to the competition based on datasets for Hartley Library Gate Data for the Academic Year 2018-2019 dataset is available in our institutional repository.

The idea of using Hartley Library entry gate data across an academic year appealed, especially because it tied in nicely with 2019 marking 100 years of Highfield Campus. In May 1919 there were 215 students, rising to approximately 300 by October 1919 (Nash and Sherwood, 2002). In the academic year 2018-2019, we had more than 24,500 students enrolled at the University, with 1,436,491 visits to Hartley Library.

The Library's Research Engagement Team organised a series of public seminars during the International Love Data Week in February 2019. The 2019 theme was Data in Everyday Life with two sub-themes of Open Data and Data Justice. We tweeted and posting on social media throughout the week using #SotonlovesData #lovedata and #LoveData19 

Alison Knight: Can privacy still exist in an age of datafication?

Prof. Ros Edwards: Big data, qualitative style

Chris Gutteridge: There's no such thing as open data

Mark Spearing, Vice-President for Research, speaking at Turing@Soutampton launchIn addition to the talks above, the week also saw the launch of Turing @ Southampton. The University of Southampton is a University Partner of The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. The Web Science Institute acts as the main point of contact between the university and The Alan Turing Institute.

The Institute’s goals are to undertake world-class research in data science and artificial intelligence, apply its research to real-world problems, drive economic impact and societal good, lead the training of a new generation of scientists, and shape the public conversation around data.

The University of Southampton has pioneered theoretical and methodological advances in data science and data-centric engineering through a rich interdisciplinary network of research groups and in collaboration with a range of expert external partners. Southampton's work informs business, industrial and governmental decision-making, and helps illuminate fundamental questions in the physical, environmental, social and life sciences.

Pictured: Mark Spearing, Vice-President for Research, speaking at the launch of the Turing Institute at Southampton.