January 2018

Professor Pink kicking of the year of 'Speculative Instruments' 

Welcome back to a new year, a new semester full of exciting workshops, talks and research themes. Many of our Junior Researchers and community members are presently defending their theses in oral exams and we wish them the best of luck! 

Interesting Junior Researcher blog posts are thus in the pipeline and a few openings, for students wanting to join as Junior Researchers, are now available. Please contact lab manager Marie Blønd on mblo@itu.dk if you are interested in becoming a Junior Researcher or volunteering for the lab. 

2018 is for ETHOS Lab, the year of 'Speculative Instruments'. This is a theme that we will be focusing on through our lab activities and research. Heads of lab and Associate Professors Rachel Douglas Jones and Marisa Cohn present the theme in a letter, explaining the focus that this theme invokes. Read the letter here    

We are very privileged to kick off the year of Speculative Instruments with a visit by Distinguished Professor Sarah Pink. She will be giving a publicETHOS talk #25 on 'Emerging Technologies & Automated Worlds', open to everyone on 1st February at 13:00. Professor Pink's research consists of a wide range of collaborations focusing on digital and emerging technologies in everyday life. Her work is usually interdisciplinary and international, connecting anthropological ethnography to design and engineering disciplines as well as to documentary and arts practice, in projects that challenge conventional ethnographic temporalities. Sharing her vast experience, Professor Pink will facilitate the seminar 'Experiments, Collaboration and Digital Ethnography in Data Spaces' for ETHOS, TiP and the Data As Relation group on 2 February. If you have a special interest in attending, then please contact us.

January is the month for setting goals for the new year! The ETHOS Lab is hosting a PhD info-day for students or alumni interested in this career path - read more below and send us an e-mail to register. The shut up and write sessions are also starting up again on 8 February. These sessions have in the previous semester proven to be very successful for particularly students working on individual thesis projects and provided a stable and disciplined dedication to the craft of writing. Interested in joining in on Thursdays from 9:30-11:30, then please register on http://bit.ly/writewrite. If you are into computational coding, then the Python Study group will also be starting up in February and be announced in next months newsletter.   

The ETHOS lab community keeps extending into other research groups and areas. An example, is Raluca Stana, former TA in the ETHOS affiliated course Navigating Complexity. Recently hired as a PhD in the research group TIME on the project I4L, Raluca is looking at social and emotional intelligence in the context of digital leadership and communication. Exploring questions such as “How can we make our employees feel listened to when communicating digitally?”, or “What are the practices of social intelligent digital leaders?”, she is eager to collaborate with master or bachelor thesis students who wish to research similar topics and collaborate on the I4L project.

Stay tuned for 2018 on our Facebook pageTwitter, Instagram and ReadIT for information about upcoming activities and contact us if you have any great ideas for lab involvement.

All the best,

ETHOS Lab

www.ethos.itu.dk 

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Theme of 2018

In 2017 we announced it the year of Ethnography and as we enter a new zodiac year, another analytical lense, or theme, has been prepared.

2018 is in the letter from Heads of Lab announced as 'The Year of Speculative Instruments'
By this, we mean both material instruments and methods as modes of instrumenting our research inquiry. Both are ways of speculating about realities, bringing together forms of hardware and techniques for critique where futures are brought into the present. Speculative Instruments brings us into dialogue with another facet of our long affiliation with experimentation, through the realities technologies enact.   

Happy New Year to all of you from Heads of Lab and Lab Manager! Read the letter here

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Research: Talk by Professor Sarah Pink

ETHOS Lab, TiP and Data as Relationd feel privileged to announce the visit of Distinguished Professor Sarah Pink RMIT University of Australia on 1st and 2nd February.

Professor Pink will be kicking off the year of Speculative Instruments, with publiceETHOS talk #25 on Emerging Technologies & Automated Worlds.

This talk speaks to the labours, frictions and infrastructures produced by efforts to put data to work. It considers the sense of possibility of being relieved of labour, its redistribution or re-assignment, and attends to the politics of how and where gaps emerge, requiring imagination and improvisation to keep futures in motion. Read more

When: Thursday, 1st February @13:00

Where: IT University of Copenhagen, Aud. 4

Everyone is welcome!

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Rig data – en fortolkende tilgang giver data værdi

Teaching: Visionary Management

ETHOS Lab researchers Brit Ross Winthereik, Michael Hockenhull and Bastian Jørgensen are running a course (in Danish) for professionals this spring entitled 'Visionary Management of the Data-Driven Organisation' The course is open for applicants until the 23rd March.

In a recent post on the ETHOS Lab blog the course managers bring up one of the course themes: the need for 'thick data' to supplement big data in data-driven organisations. Read ‘Rig data – en fortolkende tilgang giver data værdi’ also discussing how we may translate the concept of ‘thick’ data into a meaningful Danish vocabulary.

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Services: PhD info-day

Are you considering taking a PhD? Would you like to know what it is like in practice and how to apply?

ETHOS Lab is hosting an info day for those interested in pursuing either an interdisciplinary social science PhD or an industrial PhD.

Anna Sommer from Teaching & Learning Support will be giving an update on the formalities. Head of Lab Rachel Douglas-Jones will be introducing how to make a PhD application and finally Tiemo Thiess, Industrial PhD, will be giving insights into what it means in practice. 

When: Thursday 25 January 14-16:00
Where: ETHOS Lab, 1C05
All are welcome but registration is required by e-mail to mblo@itu.dk 

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Weekly writing in the lab

Writing is a craft and one of the key requirements in conveying any research. It is also a vital part of academia and requires creativity but also scientific robustness.

ETHOS Lab acknowledges this deskwork as an analytical process that needs to be taken seriously and we are therefore continuing the weekly #shutupandwrite sessions on February 8 and every Thursday until May. 

This initiative was established for academics by co-head of lab Rachel Douglas-Jones and an inherent part of the course 'Writing Innovation Studio'. Read more...

Where: ETHOS Lab, 1C05

When: Every Thursday from 8 Feb, 9:30-11:30

Who: Open to all students and faculty at ITU, please register on http://bit.ly/writewrite to get calendar invitations and e-mail updates.

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Other News

• EventThe Data As Relation Research Group invites practitioners and people with an interest in public digitisation to an afternoon event about governance in the data driven society. 

The event takes place at the IT-University on the 13th of March 2018 from 14.30-16.00. Stay tuned for more information about the event and how to participate here.

• Job | The innovative start-up Develop Diverse is looking for a creative Data Scientist to help them develop AI technology to tackle gender inequality and bring diversity within a workplace. Read the job advertisement here.

• Call for Papers:
DASTS 2018 conference 'Engaging the Data Moment' taking place at the IT University 24,25 March. 
Deadline: 1 February, submitted to James Maguire on jmag@itu.dk - read more

Personification Across Disciplines, (PAD 2018, #personification2018) is an interdisciplinary conference at Durham University, taking place from 17-19 September 2018.
Deadline: 9 Feb - read more

EASST2018 Conference - Making Science, Technology and Society together. The conference takes place 25-28 July 2018 @ Lancaster University and there are 7 approved panels.
Deadline:14 February - read more

• Academic sparring | If you are interested in joining the TiP-Salon for academic readings and diuscussions, the meet-up is every Wednesday in 3A08 @ 12-13:00. Please contact Ester Fritsch on estf@itu.dk to get on the mailing-list for details. 

• Library resources for researchers | The IT-Library, in collaboration with the Library Committee at ITU, has initiated a pilot project to gauge the interest in the e-resources available in REX. If you are interested in using the service, you will have to file a request through the provided online form [http://ku-dk.libsurveys.com/ITB-Pilot-Project]. 

• Videos from former PublicETHOS events 

• Opening hours are Tuesday and Thursday at 12.30-16 in 2018.

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