Research Practices
Infrastructures
Interfaces
Paul Wouters
Outline
• The relevance of humanities
• e-Research != data science
• Interfaces as important as
infrastructures
• What about 2.0?
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
VKS has dual mission
studying practices
and
supporting exploration
changing practices, telling stories, building tools
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
Building collaboratories in
social history
VKS & International
Institute for Social History
Exploring women’s studies
VKS & Women’ Studies,
University of Utrecht
Alfa-lab
VKS & Royal Netherlands
Academy Arts & Sciences
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
examples of work
Humanities
“Meaning concerns interpretation of data,
evidence, and texts. Value ranges over the
entire field of cultural, aesthetic, social, and
scientific investments. Significance,
implicating both the former two, raises
questions of representation, in the sense of
accounting for (explanation) and of capturing,
in the sense both of offering a faithful
rendition (description) and of making broad
claims (generalization).”
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
Double claim
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
5/31/2016
7th eConcertation eInfrastructures
Data theories
• Given out there
• Building block
• Standard for
hypothesis testing
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• Constructed
• Result
• Theory-laden
eSI Users & Web 2.0
4 perspectives on ICT
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•
•
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Conservative: ICT as neutral container
Pragmatic: ICT as tool
Critical: ICT as technology of control
Radical: ICT as metaphor
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
Crombie’s styles
•
•
•
•
•
•
Deductive
Experimental
Hypotheses and analogies
Taxonomy
Probabilistic - statistical
Evolutionary (“historic” or “genetic”)
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
Some modes of e-research
•
From data scarcity to data floods and cloud computing: new
methods in data analysis and representation
•
Beyond data science: the radical promise of computational
modelling
•
Visual culture: how do we visualize not only data but also
knowledge and interests ("Can you see what I know?")?
•
Telling stories in New media: new formats of communication,
publication and representation
•
Social neuroscience: coupling brains and the social dimension
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
Interfacing
• Interfaces between disciplines
• Interfaces between infrastructures and
practices
• Interfaces as representation researcher
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
Alfalab
• http://www.slideshare.net/douwez/ieeeoxford-presentatie-alfalab-2008
• http://alfalablog.huygensinstituut.nl/
• from tools to communities
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0
5/31/2016
7th eConcertation eInfrastructures
Flickr and other 2.0
• implicit technology focus
• synergy in practices
– VKS collab
• institutions and infrastructures
– Flickr: commercial cultural heritage?
• method as institution
– Flickr: invisible use
1/18/10
eSI Users & Web 2.0