The all-day event will bring together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change

The Data Advocacy for All project on the University of Colorado Boulder campus is sponsoring a one-day Working with Data for Social Change symposium March 14.

This all-day event brings together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change and who have worked to strengthen ethical data humanities education in higher education, said Laurie Gries, associate professor of English and director of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, who is spearheading the symposium.

The symposium aims not only to demonstrate and underscore the value of data advocacy research for the humanities at large, but also to generate collective ideas as to how to data advocacy education can be enhanced across the disciplines in higher education, according to Gries.

She said she believes the symposium will be of interest to faculty, staff and students who want to learn more about the data humanities and, more particularly, about data advocacy as a focus of research and/or pedagogy. Those interested in attending in-person or via Zoom can register here.

The symposium will feature scholars and activists from around the country, including Melissa Borja, Nasreen Abd Elal and Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, who have advocated with data for social change on projects including the Virulent Hate Project, Visualizing Palestine and Torn Apart/Separados, respectively. Additionally, Gries will talk about her data-driven project, the Swastika Counter Project, which was recently profiled in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Gries said the symposium also will feature scholars who have worked intently to build data humanities education within and beyond the CU Boulder campus. For instance, in addition to featured speaker Melanie Walsh discussing the Responsible Data Sets in Context project, David Glimp, Nathan Pieplow and other CU Boulder and CU Denver professors will speak about their efforts to train students how to engage data through critical, humanistic frameworks and how to use data effectively to address matters of significance to them and their communities.

Speaking of Gries’ efforts to spearhead the symposium, Glimp said, “Laurie has assembled a terrific team of collaborators to develop her vision of not only cultivating data literacy among our students but also equipping students with the tools to argue with data. By ‘arguing with data,’ I mean both being able to identify and assess all the ways data-backed arguments can mislead or go wrong, and being able to craft effective, responsible arguments with data about matters of the greatest urgency for our world.”

The Data Advocacy for All project was the recipient of a $300,000 CU Next Award in May 2022. 

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