CfP: Big Data on Human and Social Sciences – History, issues and challenges
The Instituto de História Contemporânea / Institute of Contemporary History (IHC, FCSH-NOVA) and the History Lab (Columbia University)
will be hosting an international conference to examine the challenges
and impact of ‘Big Data’ in the human and social sciences, which opens
up new connections and collaborations within the research community and
with the civil society. The conference will be held on November 6-7, 2017, in Lisbon and it is open to all scientific areas.
Humanists
and social scientists have at their disposal an unprecedented amount of
data today. For sure, the wide variety of data available, including the
massively growing public archival data, creates many opportunities. For
instance, it allows to extend the geographical and longitudinal scope
of analysis on a new scale. But nor the data existent in social and
historical processes is neutral nor the ways to store, retrieve and
analyse such amount of data is based upon simplistic decisions.
With
their capacity to historically situate the objects of analysis, discuss
meanings and vast textual corpora, as well as their strength on
contextual knowledge, historians, sociologists, political scientists,
economists, philosophers and anthropologists are in strong position to
contribute to this revolution. Grounded on the presence of academic
experts from such fields of knowledge, this Congress will cover a wide
range of topics aiming to build bridges with formal, applied and natural
scientists and to open windows into the public domain.
What
can we learn from the rise and fall of cliometrics, and how will
humanists receive new research using computational methods? What are the
biggest challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls in applying
computational methods to historical data? If these new methods actually
lead to new discoveries, will that change standards of evidence, and
challenge claims based on purely qualitative research?
We welcome
proposals for individual papers to address these but also other
questions. Some of the topics include but are not limited to:
- History
of Big Data; - Big Data and modes of knowledge production; - Big Data.
Pitfalls and errors; - Development of complex datasets; - Big Data and
networks; - Digital Humanities and historical research; - Archives,
libraries and Big Data; - Historical Big Data and statistical
tools; - Text mining and historical sources; - Big Data management for
researchers and research institutions; - Big Data infrastructures.
Paper proposals should be submitted until July 31, 2017 and
should include the name, affiliation, title, abstract (minimum 150
words, maximum 300 words), five keywords, up to five bibliographical
references, and a brief biographical note (200 words maximum). The
results will be communicated by September 15, 2017.
Communications may be held in Portuguese, Spanish and English and should
not last for more than 15 minutes. The organization will publish, after
approval of the Scientific Committee, a selection of articles from the
papers presented at our Conference.
Keynote Speakers (confirmed): Matthew Connelly (Columbia University)
Scientific Committee:
Ana Paula Pires, IHC-FCSH/UNL; Ângela Salgueiro, IHC-FCSH/UNL; Celso
Castro, FGV, Brasil; Daniel Alves, IHC-FCSH/UNL; Daniel Gomes, FCCN-FCT;
David Bodenhamer, Polis Center/Indiana University; Dominique Vinck,
Université de Lausanne; Inês Queiroz, IHC-FCSH/UNL; Ivo Veiga,
IHC-FCSH/UNL; Kimmo Elo, University of Turku; Martin Düring, University
of Luxembourg; Martin Stark, University of Trier; Matthew Connelly,
Columbia University; Noela Invernizzi, Universidade Federal do Paraná;
Pedro Moura Ferreira, ICS-UL;Tiago Brandão, IHC-FCSH/UNL.
Organizing Committee: Ivo Veiga, Ana Paula Pires, Ângela Salgueiro, Inês Queiroz e Tiago Brandão
Contact Info:
Ivo Veiga