February-March 2018

Making a move...

We make analytical moves, strategic moves and this month we have made a physical move at the IT University. From now on you will find us on the 3rd floor, in room 3A30, where we are currently camping in boxes and will hopefully settle in the next couple of weeks. The lab space will mainly be dedicated to a few workstations for our Junior Researchers, for hosting our meetings and events (that are small enough to fit in) as well as having opening hours where you can interact with the Lab Manager, Lab Assistant and in some instances Teaching Assistants. Most of our activities this months will be taking place in larger spaces at ITU though, so everyone at the university have the possibility of participating.

Global Open Data Day is being celebrated beginning of March and ETHOS Lab has collaborated with Open4Citizens, OpenKnowledge Denmark, Tant Lab and DSSL Lab to make a local Danish event i Copenhagen, taking place on Friday the 2nd March at 16:30 at ITU. If you have an interest in open data projects and want to do some socializing within this network, then please join us.

Our current Lab Manager Marie Blønd's project 'baby loading' is coming to the point of completion and so she will be going maternity leave from 1 March 2018. Fortunately, Simran Kaur Gahoonia - also known as Simy - will be managing the lab in the meanwhile and contributing with her own style and academic interests. Simy recently graduated from the ITU with a MSc in Digital Innovation & Management. She is also well-known for her previous roles as teaching assistant from several DIM courses and as ITU Coding Pirates Ambassador.

February/March offers ways of supporting the academic rhythms and interests of students and staff by offering recurrent weekly activities throughout the semester. Thursdays will be dedicated to workshops where we meet up for #shutupandwrite in the morning and in the afternoon/evening run the Python Study Group.

Thursday the 22nd February will be a workshop marathon day, as we are squeezing in, a Tableau workshop in the middle of the day. The workshop is open for all students and academic staff (also externals) but please remember to sign up here as seats are limited.

Distinguished Professor Sarah Pink visited Data As Relation and ETHOS Lab in the beginning of the month and delivered a publicETHOS talk on 'Emerging Technologies & Automated Worlds' that was both intriguing and inspiring. If you missed it, then we live streamed the event and the recording is available via our Facebook page. We want to pay tribute to the talk's discussant Maja Holten Bruun, heading the Research Network for the Anthropology of Technology for discussing the contingencies of studying automated technologies. Interviews with Sarah Pink will also be made available soon in the form of a podcast conducted by Professor Brit Winthereik for the Research Network and a CAST-IT interview performed by our computer science colleague and Associate Professor Thore Husfeldt.

ETHOS Lab and the Data As Relation project also ran a seminar, facilitated by Rachel Douglas-Jones and Sarah Pink, discussing research methods and contingencies of making ethnography with(in) digital spaces. The seminar 'Experiments, Collaboration & Digital Ethnography in Data spaces' was enriched with interdisciplinary participants from various research departments at ITU and other universities, as well as industry using ethnographic methods. This gathering of researchers, was the first in the theme of 'The Year of Speculative Instruments', framing the lab's research inquiries and activities this year. Read more about the theme in the letter from Heads of Lab.

Another activity hosted recently, was the very popular PhD info-day for students or alumni interested in this career path. The interest exceeded the capacity of the lab space where Josefine Hertz and Anna Sommer from Learning Support presented the formal framework of a various forms of PhDs and its constellations of stakeholders. Industrial PhD student Tiemo Thiess, former Junior Researcher in ETHOS Lab, presented the practices of creating an industrial PhD through the Innovation Fund. Co-head of lab Rachel Douglas-Jones ended the session with a workshop on how to apply for a PhD. We will be announcing PhD openings, relevant to ETHOS Lab interests, through our Facebook page and under 'other news' in our monthly newsletters.

Lastly we want to direct your attention to the inaugural lecture by Professor Brit Ross Winthereik on the 26th March and her recent article (in Danish) on the human consequences of "smart" technologies.

Stay tuned for on our Facebook page, Twitter, 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

Research:

Open Data Day 2018

ETHOS Lab, Open Knowledge Denmark and Open4Citizens are celebrating the global open data day. Everyone interested in open data are welcome to come to the event 'Open Data Day - Socialising in Copenhagen' where we will have presentations on amazing open data projects as well as give out the Danish Open Data Award 2018. Afterwards, the participants are encouraged to socialize over drinks in Scroll Bar.

When: Friday 2 March from 16:30-19:00

Where: IT University of Copenhagen in the Design Lab/Atrium

Open to all - feel free to share the news.

Teaching:

Tableau Workshop

Tableau offers students at ITU free access to their software and in the course Navigating Complexity, Mapping & Visualisation it is one of the 3-4 tool tracks offered to analyse data.

Whether you are a novice or advanced user of the software, then this workshop could be fruitful for you. Tableau is offering an introductory workshop by Pauline Smeele and it is open to all.

When: Thursday, 22 February from 13-15:00

Where: 3A12-14

Sign up required here as there are limited seats

Services:

Python Study Group

The Python Study Group is starting up again this spring.

In ETHOS Lab we are happy to invite you once again to participate in our weekly sessions on Thursday afternoon/evenings for 8 weeks. We aim at gathering a community of people interested in learning ore developing within the programming language Python..

A Tribute

ETHOS Lab Manager Marie Blønd is making a tribute to commemorate Ursula Le Guin who recently passed away and open conversations for the use of poems in research.

Ursula Le Guin reminded us that "we need the languages of both science and poetry to save us for merely stockpiling endless 'information' that fails to inform our ignorance and our irresponsibility"

In her project work, Marie uses poems as an analytical device in conducting ethnography and reflexive writing. In this casual session she shares her experience and reflections on what poems may provide us with when performing and conveying robust, qualitative research. Simultaneously she wants to use the opportunity to thank everyone on her last day before maternity leave.

When: Wednesday, February 28 at 16:30

Where: ETHOS Lab

Shut up & Write

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 desk-work as an analytical process that needs to be taken seriously and which is why we facilitate these sessions.

When: Every Thursday from 9:30-11:30 (starting 15 February). You do not have to come to every session.

Where: In the lab 3A30 or 3A03

Sign up required on: http://bit.ly/writewrite so you can get further details

New Location

The lab has moved to be on the same floor as the rest of the Business IT department. Come by and see our new room in 3A30 at the end of the 3E corridor.

Due to the new space being slightly smaller, the Lab Manager and assistant will have an office in 3E11 but will of course be available for opening hours, meetings and activities taking place in the lab.

Did you know that you can check out availability and activities in the lab by requesting to see ethos@itu.dk in your outlook calendar view? Otherwise, we also try to create an overview here.

Find us on the 3rd floor in room 3A30.

Lab-warming coming up!

Lab Manager

As the current lab manager Marie Blønd is going on maternity leave 1st March, we are fortunate to have found her replacement in the competent and skilled Simy.

Simy is a well-known figure at the ITU, as she has been teaching in several courses on the programme Digital Innovation & Management and she is the ITU amabassador for Coding Pirates.

Come by the lab and greet Simy welcome as she takes on the role as Lab Manager from the 1st March.

Other News

• Lecture | Inaugural Lecture by Professor Brit Winthereik takes place on the 26th March from 2-3 pm in Aud1 @ITU. The abstract for the lecture ‘Seeing through infrastructure: Ethnographies of health IT, development aid, energy, and data’ can be read here.

• Lecture | Claus Bossen on 'How to put IT and society in desirable orders: Participatory Design, Actor-Network Theory and healthcare IT' on 15th March from 14-16 at University of Copenhagen - details here

• Event | The 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 'Digitale dilemmaer: Hvordan forandrer data den offentlige sektor?' takes place at the IT-University on the 13th of March 2018 from 14.30-16.00. Read more here and as the event is sold out we are hoping for live streaming

• Job | Danske Advokater is looking for a student worker for a project on developing data extracting and reports, 15-22 hours a week, deadline 18th February - read more about the job (in Danish) here

• PhD call | Developing Digital ‘Capital’: Exploring evidence-based models of digital inclusion at University West of Scotland. Deadline for application is 23 February - read more here

• Conferences:
DASTS 2018 conference 'Engaging the Data Moment' taking place at the IT University 24 & 25 May.
NEW Deadline: 15 February, submitted to James Maguire on jmag@itu.dk - 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 was 14 February - re ad more

Personification Across Disciplines, (PAD 2018, #personification2018) is an interdisciplinary conference at Durham University, taking place from 17-19 September 2018.
Deadline was 9 Feb - 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 Baki Cakici bakc@itu.dk to be added to the mailing-list for details or to suggest content.

• Shut up & Write on Wednesdays | Head of Lab Rachel Douglas-Jones also heads another writing session, primarily for researchers on Wednesdays at 13:15 in room 3A08 with 3-4 sessions of 45 minutes. You can just show up or send her and e-mail. You can read more about shut up and write here and here.

• Videos from former PublicETHOS events

• Opening hours are Tuesday and Thursday at 12.30-16:30 in 3A30