Projects
The lab research community both hosts and serve as an inspirational playground for research projects. We sometimes engage in projects together and at other times create connections beyond the lab.Nordic Approaches to Algorithmic Systems
Erasure Poetry and the GDPR
Beginning in 2018, this project has engaged the new General Data Protection Regulation through the form of erasure poetry. Through events in Denmark and internationally, we have convened academics and publics to create erasure poems from the text of the GDPR. Selections have been published in two erasure poetry collections. The collections are available through the Lab, and have been used in training workshops around the world! For an account of the process, see here.
Making Sense of Medicinal Cannabis Debates
Unexamined Data - Living with Ambivalences
Monster Writing
Absent Data
SSH Knowledge and Business Sustainability Database
Moving Data, Moving People
Computing within Limits
Since 2021, the lab has been host to a solar server. Inspired by the set-up at the Low-Tech Magazine, the solar server currently hosts the blog and serves as experimental infrastructure. By limiting the energy and forcibly adapting to the energy cycles of the environment. This limitation of energy changes the way we conceive of usual IT infrastructures such as websites or services. Currently the server is being used to host a YouTube transcript downloader. T
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VIRT-EU
The VIRT-EU project was a Horizon 2020 collaboration between five European research partners the London School of Economics (UK), Open Rights Group (UK), Uppsala University (SE), Politechnico di Torino (IT) and Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (DK) hosted at the IT University of Copenhagen. The project aimed to demonstrate how ethical questions can and should be addressed in the development of technology. The project outputs include tool prototypes for self-assessment and for convening conversations about ethics. ETHOS facilitated conversations between the projectâs ethnographers and its network analysis scholars, hosted IoT Day with project members in 2018 and 2019.
Nordic Engineers Ethics of AI Report
Mapping a Colony
ETHOS Lab is part of a funded Europeana research project called Mapping a Colony, marking the centennial of the sale of the Danish West Indies (present day US Virgin Islands) to the United States. The project was conducted in collaboration with The Royal Library, the Uncertain Archives project, the Pastâs Future project, and lead by the author Lene Asp. The objective of the Mapping a Colony project was to create an interactive map to highlight and investigate Danish colonial heritage, and ETHOS took a role in discussing the politics of mapping, creating an interactive map based on the databases, and participating in the interdisciplinary datasprint âRepresenting History Through Dataâ.
Data as Relation
Data as Relation was a Velux Fonden research project hosted in the TiP group between 2017 and 2020, and focused on digitalization in the Danish State. The ETHOS Lab was a site of methods experimentation in the project, supporting conversations across the PhD projects, hosting âshut up and codeâ sessions, and a data sprint on Techplomacy. The focus of methodological experimentation in the project was about bringing different fieldsites together in conversation. One way in which this was done was through monster theory, creating a Bestiary of Digital Monsters, as a means of generating conversations across field-sites.
Student Surveillance Project
During the spring semester of 2021, lecturers suddenly discovered that a new risk algorithm predicting student drop-out was activated in ITUâs online learning platform; LearnIT operating through Moodle software. While the algorithm got deactivated, a student project in collaboration with ETHOS lab started, investigating the naturalisation of surveillance in learning platforms and their connection to how universities get funded.
Ethos as Data Provider
Offering the lab as a site for supervision and consulting in Digital Methods can be complicated in the messiness of reality, where we periodically receive requests to harvest and provide data from social media. We occasionally feel a sense of ambivalence, uneasiness and even resistance towards handing over datasets and leaving them in the hands of others. The project âETHOS as a Data Providerâ attends to what kind of data ethics we find ourselves involved in by incorporating two entangled tracks. The first track concerns reflecting on and qualifying our internal process of handling these requests, and the other is to participate in the academic conversations of data ethics in practice and contribute to the field.
Returning and Resisting âNormalcyâ as a University Worker
Since we returned to our offices in Summer 2021, there has been a buzzing in the corners of the Lab. Conversations on how corona and the political handling of it has affected our work life has spread, and an insistence to fundamentally (re)think working conditions for knowledge producers given the prevailing neoliberal influence has grown. We consider this to be a reoccurring theme within the Lab community, and a project which is slowly figuring and finding its form. The process is highly valuable and perhaps this is the very project.
Accountability and Transparency: Data collection on the Danish Signature Projects
Emilie Mørch Groth
Driven by an interest in public use of data and AI, I set out to map the Danish Signature Projects. These projects are funded by the National Uptake Fund by the Danish State, and are deployed in municipalities and regions nationwide, experimenting with and improving the use of AI in different public sectors. My focus became the many partners involved in the projects, as I see accountability as dependent on stakeholders involved in the data work. But the mapping exercise was quickly interrupted by a lack of available information on the project partners, and this lack of transparency pivoted the project from a mapping exercise to an investigation of the partners involved in the Signature Projects. The lack of information and the murky landscape have proved to be a persistent obstacle, and with my project, I aim to improve the transparency by shedding light on accountability through what information I can and cannot obtain on the Signature Projects.
Investigating the Gender Gap in STEM through the lens of Data Feminism principles
Louie Meyer:
As a gender queer student in the field of computer science, I often wonder what constitutes the significant gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Even more so, I wonder why the gap is continuously narrated as a binary distinction. .
Through this project, I aspire to create awareness of the gender gap in STEM and the missing representation of gender minorities. During my process, I explore potential ways to challenge the status quo, particularly focusing on speculative data visualizations. The project is inspired and informed by the Data Feminism principles and draws on methods from critical and speculative design.
Brilliance Bias: Differences in gender perception at ITU
Chris Aftzidis & Pau Victoria Menshikoff:
Our project idea sprung from our own frustrations with the male-centeredness in academia and how brilliance is a trait seemingly exclusive to men. Initially, we wanted to investigate academic papers and whether there are visible patterns in the citations, e.g. do men tend to cite men. That idea eventually evolved into analysing course evaluations. We hoped to be able to gain an understanding of brilliance bias and what it affects, both generally and at ITU. Ultimately, we stopped our project after running into some issues with GDPR and realising that it was not possible to complete within the given timeframe.
On Spotifyâs recommender systems
Tristan Vonet:
My research is driven by a strong motivation to understand the intricate dynamics of the music industry, a complex entity I have immersed myself in since 2020. My aim is to shine a light on the use of recommender systems, how they can perpetuate certain forms of negative bias, particularly gender bias, evident in the alarming lack of female artists among the most streamed musicians globally and in Denmark. Eventually, I hope to become an expert in this field and help develop new solutions that can reduce the harm and injustices that can be brought forth by recommender systems
Secrecy Sells: Understanding Consumer Perspectives in the Privacy Market
Ahmet Akkoc:
“Has privacy become a luxury? This is an independent research project on the consumer interpretation of privacy and privacy as a commodity. Mass data collection and surveillance has generated serious interest in privacy. From there have emerged a variety of artifacts and products built around privacy. I conducted interviews with 8 students from Danish universities to better understand online privacy habits, and what technologies or commodities enable or promote them. I conclude on the implications of re-contextualising privacy commodification as using a paid or bundled service to improve one’s privacy, rather than the traditional understanding of trading privacy for utility.”