Welcome back in the lab post-lock-down and welcome to all the new ITU students!
A new semester is starting and it will most likely be very different from other semesters. Living with a restriction on the lab of a maximum of 5 people we will be exercising COVID-19 responsible inclusion while moving on the fringes and finding alternative routes.  

This journey started today with a 'Data Walk' through Amagerfælled in collaboration with the student organization Rethinkit discussing data through landscapes and political justifications. We are inspired by the book 'Ethnography for a Data Saturated World' by Hannah Knox & Dawn Nafus (2020) and particularly chapter 9:   

'[...] examining strategies for public matters of concern in relation to data production, following from and developing from previous efforts at surfacing and valorising situated knowledge in particular urban contexts, and identifying how ‘bottom-up’ data subjectivity could become collaborative and collective through the use of participatory meaning-making processes.'
Powell in Knox & Nafus (2020:212)

Our annual call for enrolling students as Junior Researchers in the lab for the next 2 semesters is out! The invitation to apply with a project includes ALL students from ALL programmes - even outside ITU. Deadline for application is 25 September. One Junior Researcher, already selected, is from MCTS in Munich; Welcome Benedict Lang! 

Python Study Group is back to meeting physically, this time on Wednesdays from 17.30-19.30 in 5A14-16, starting 16 September for 8 weeks. Please register as soon as possible as we may have to have a cap on the number of participants. Participation is open to both students and faculty and please read more about the format of the study group.   

Blogpost from our recent Junior Researchers will be appearing on our MetaData Blog and this month we are excited to present Nanna, Clara and Rebecca's piece on doing ethnography in Greenland! You may have already seen their ethnographic diary on our Instagram. Co-head of lab Rachel Douglas-Jones is also blogging this month about the PhD course 'Research, Interrupted with over 150 participants. Under lockdown premises and conditions for performance became asymmetrical as care-work, homebound internet-connections and restricted mobility affected individual circumstances and cancelled out planned fieldwork, particularly for junior scholars. As a response, Rachel and Katrine Meldgaard Kjær designed the courses involving international labs such as Vitality lab (AUS) and The Ethnographic Studio (US) and ran them through the online ETHOS Lab during Danish lockdown. Querying Twitter #ResearchInterrupted will also give you an idea of the journey, relations, contributions and workarounds that took place.    

Part of this semester will also be dedicated to Lab reading groups; one run by faculty researchers (CARGO) and one coordinated by Lab Assistant and Extinction Rebellion activist Luuk Blum on Activism x Research.  

The syllabus on the Digital Anthropocene is finally OFFICIAL!! It was introduced on the #EASST4S2020 research panel The Digital Anthropocene consisting of Rachel Douglas-Jones, James Maguire, Astrid Oberbobeck Andersen and Rasmus Tyge Haarløv interrogating justice, diplomacy, negotiation in political data and ways of knowing. 

Last but not least we have a SURPRISE coming up somewhere in September: A book launch on a second volume of the GDPR Deletion Poetry Chapbook!!! The event will most likely be small and held at the volunteer-run bookstore Ark in Copenhagen where it will also be available for purchase. Keep posted through our social media [twitter, facebook Instagram] or catch up in the next newsletter.

All the best,

ETHOS Lab 
ethos.itu.dk 
Co-heads of Lab: Marisa Cohn & Rachel Douglas-Jones
Post doc: Katrine Meldgaard Kjær
Lab Manager: Marie Blønd
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Recruiting
Junior Researchers

Application deadline 25 Sept. 12:00pm

A Junior Researcher is a talented, enthusiastic student who is interested in being part of an experimental research lab while contributing to informal knowledge sharing and being part of an academic community. The role is not paid but considered an extracurricular activity that comes with a community of research fellowship. 

As a Junior Researcher you do a project in the lab - either related to the lab's themes/projects or a project reflecting your own interest or experimentation. You are invited into a community of faculty researchers from ETHOS affiliated research groups and other Lab members and staff from whom you will receive input and feedback on your project throughout the semesters.

• Find out more on what is expected and how to apply

• Read about last year's Junior Researchers and their projects. 

• Listen to Marianna tell us what it is like being a Junior Researcher. 
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Doing STS research in a postcolonial field

Doing STS research in a postcolonial field

Blog post by Junior Researchers Clara Stage Langgaard, Nanna Louise Haagen Olesen and Rebecca Mandrup Hoeck

In our thesis we investigated the implementation of Public Digital Mail (PDM) in Greenland. In our research quest we conducted fieldwork in Nuuk in the early spring of 2020. This blogpost has the intention of partly explaining our research endeavour and partly giving concrete advice to other STS researchers on how to do research in a postcolonial field. …Read the blog post..
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Deletion Poetry September Surprise 

A SEPTEMBER SURPRISE will be popping up during this month....

A book launch on a second volume of the GDPR Deletion Poetry Chapbook!!! The event will most likely be small and held at the volunteer-run bookstore Ark in Copenhagen where it will also be available for purchase. Keep posted through our social media!! 
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Python Study Group - runs again in Fall 2020

Enroll in the 
Python Study Group

The popular Python Study Group is hosted by ETHOS Lab again this fall semester and taking place on:

Wednesdays from 17:30 - 19:30 (room 5A14-16) starting 23. Sept - 18 November 2020. 

The community-centered learning will revolve around the book 'Learn Python the Hard Way' and no prior programming skills are required to participate. 

You can sign up for the study group on here and if you have any questions, please contact ETHOS Lab's Python Study Group coordinator, Veronika Skotting at vesk@itu.dk. 
Read more about the study group.
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Research, Interrupted

Research, Interrupted

Blog post by Rachel Douglas-Jones, Co-Head of the ETHOS Lab

Fieldwork for ethnographers has changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to shift under our feet. In the spring of this year, PhD students and their supervisors were struggling with the implications. In June, ETHOSLab ran two PhD courses for students whose resarch has been interrupted. Read more about the courses here.
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The Digital Antropocene 
Syllabus

In February 2019, we hosted a Syllabus Workshop in the ETHOS Lab. Hannah Knox’s visit coincided with an initiative James Maguire and Astrid O. Andersen had begun with a Slow Seminar at Aarhus University, and together we decided to convene around a syllabus workshop for a field we wanted to call The Digital Anthropocene.

What is it about? The syllabus is about how materials are part of our computational present, and how computational artifacts make the world newly know to us. We wanted to identify, together, how teaching the digital Anthropocene was distinct from teaching “the Anthropocene” in general. What was there about computation – its affordances, histories, and impacts – that could sharpen our focus? Read more and download the syllabus.
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Interview with Benedict

Welcome to
Benedict Lange

Interview by Luuk Blum, ETHOS Lab Assistant 

A big welcome to Benedict Lange interning in the lab for this semester as part of his MSc at MCTS. He has also joined the Lab's Junior Researcher Programme with his thesis project about the perception of technology as a solution for societal issues within Hackathons. Luuk has conducted a small interview so that we could all get to know him better... 

One nice similarity between Benedict and the lab was Benedict naming his technical devices after female scientists; Laptop: Lise Meitner, Tablet: Ada Lovelace, Phone: Grace Hopper. Read the interview

Twitter@Benedictlng or Instagram@benedictlang
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Other News & Info

Events

The Alt_CPH_2020’s programme for Patterns in Resistance changed form and we want to draw your attention to these online and offline events taking place

Webinar : Materialising Gendered Archives: Weaving, Language, and the Global Textile Object with artist Raisa Kabir, 2. Sept at 5 pm

Webinar with Professor Lisa Baraitser: Enduring Time - On Violence and Care, 16 Sept 6 pm

Event (physical) Reparationens Kunst: Sårbarhed, Arbejde, Lokale Knuder - 19 sept. from 1-6 pm


Tools and experiments

Find the list of podcasts here 
New edition to the podcast list is the Data as Relation Podcast Series by TiP Professor Brit Ross Winthereik and Associate Professor James MacGuire
Podcast Stream on SoundCloud

Sketch Engine Software
ETHOS Lab pushed for an institutional license of Sketch Engine (NLP), so any ITU staff or student can use their institutional login to use the software. Go to https://auth.sketchengine.eu

Blog on open courses suggested by the Rajapinta collective as interesting and highly relevant for people interested in the intersection of society and information technology at Finnish universities in topics like 'network analysis', 'computational social science' and other digital research methods.

#HELLO: Who responds to your #hello?
The lab recommends experimenting with the twitterbot created by Cancan and Line by #hello into the Twitter void! The bot's sole purpose in its (non)life is to respond with a ‘hello’ to anyone and anything on Twitter that shouts out #hello. This makes it possible to have extended, if slightly one-noted, conversations with the bot and to receive a response when greeting the social media platform in general. At least, that was the idea behind the bot’s creation. Since it went 'live', it has, however, gone somewhat rogue, responding and not-responding according to patterns not always fully clear to its creators. These patterns, and the bot’s interactions with the people and non-people of Twitter, will become the subject of an article on contemporary technologies of writing and the non-human writer.
 

Projects

Moving Data, Moving People is hosting a RA in the ETHOS Lab. Principal Investigator is co-head of Lab Rachel Douglas-Jones - read more about the project

Center for Digital Welfare kicked off the research project STAY HOME funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. The ethnographic data collected in the Everyday Digitalization project is already being put to good use in a cross-disciplinary collaboration with the Theological Faculty and the Saxo Institute from University of Copenhagen, the Architect school, and ITU. Read more about the project

 

Jobs

Research Assistant in the ETHOS Lab/Project
Moving Data-Moving People: Reorganizing Trust through China´s Social Credit System 
Application deadline 16. September

PhD Fellow at ITU for the SOS-Project
Application deadline 30. September 

Assistant /associate professorship at ITU in digital data analysis and computational user studies 
Application deadline (extended) 15. September

Post-doc at KU in the European project on a Linguistic and Visual Analysis of European Far-Right Online Communities' Politics of Identity
Application deadline 1. October

Associate Professor at AAU in Public Administration and Organization Studies
Application deadline 14. September 

 

LAB opening hours 

Tuesday and Thursday, 12.30-16:00 in 3A30
Limit: 5 people in the lab  
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