Call for applications

• You are pursuing a PhD in the social sciences (e.g. anthropology, science and technology studies, human geography) and are interested in working with ecological data as part of your research? Or you are a PhD candidate in computer or data science and are interested in engaging reflexively with ecological data and with perspectives from critical social science?
• You would like to learn hands-on methods for critically examining existing data (sets) in your field of research?
• You would like to meet other PhD students facing similar methodological questions and experiment with analysing data and telling data stories together?

Then we invite you to participate in our one-week Summer School (June 30 – July 4, 2025) in Frankfurt am Main. The school will feature international lecturers and offer method-intensive training with a focus on group projects. Travel expenses for participants will be covered. The Summer School will be taught in English.

Deadline for applications: February 9, 2025

The topic

Encounters with data-driven technologies can hardly be avoided today, whether in scientific research, policy-making or everyday life. Even social and cultural scientists who are not working with quantitative data are confronted and challenged by ‘big data’ rationalities and by the processes and effects of datafication – epistemologically, methodologically and empirically.

Our double view of ecological data and data ecologies foregrounds the engagement with infrastructures and technical conditions of data production (data ecologies) and the specific implications of ecological data as a mode of knowledge production about ecological relations. Data not only produce information about ecologies and make environments knowable in specific ways; at the same time, data and their infrastructures generate new environments and ecological relations (Gabrys 2016).

Against this backdrop, the Summer School takes seriously the generative force of methods and their world-building capacities. Our aim is to foster a critical analysis of ecological data and an understanding of data ecologies, i.e. the data devices, infrastructures and processes involved in data production and analysis.

The summer school

The five-day summer school offers participants a hands-on learning environment that emphasizes experimental and collective approaches to ecological data and data ecologies. The intensive, method-focused program is designed to provide participants with practical skills in working with data and encourage critical analysis of data devices.

The summer school trains participants in a variety of cutting-edge approaches for knowing, questioning and telling stories with data, from the interdisciplinary fields of Critical Data Studies and Science and Technology Studies. Participants will gather experience in methods such as reading data sets (Poirier 2021), data walking (Powell 2018), and critical visualisation of data (Hall & Davila 2023).

The 24 participants will be grouped in thematic tracks with 3–5 other members based on their research interests and prior experience. Each track will be closely accompanied by a member of our interdisciplinary team of lecturers. All tracks will converge for keynotes and plenary sessions, while the overall working format promotes interdisciplinary exchange and long-term collaboration.

The summer school will be held in English.

The team

Engage with our interdisciplinary team of lecturers from Anthropology, Geography and Digital Research, Science and Technology Studies, History of Science, and Critical Data Studies.

Organising Lecturers

• Martina Klausner, Professor for Digital Anthropology and STS, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
• Till Straube, Research Associate at the Department for Human Geography, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
• Katrin Amelang, Deputy Professor at the Department for Anthropology and Cultural Research, University of Bremen, Germany

Invited Lecturers

• Susanne Bauer, Professor at the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, Norway
• Orit Halpern, Professor of Digital Cultures, Technical University Dresden, Germany
• Laura Kocksch, Assistant Professor, Department of Culture and Learning, The Techno-Anthropology Lab, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Boris Michel, Professor for Digital Geographies, University of Halle, Germany
• Julia Verne, Professor for Cultural Geography, University of Main, Germany

Who can apply?

We welcome applications from PhD students from a range of disciplines within and beyond the empirical social sciences, e.g. Anthropology, Human Geography, Science and Technology Studies.

We also welcome applications from computer scientists and data practitioners who are interested in engaging reflexively with data and with perspectives from critical social science and ethnographic or qualitative research.

PhD students at all stages of their research project can apply.

The application

Your application should include

• a short CV (including publications, if applicable),
• a short summary of your research project (one page),
• and a motivation letter (one page) stating
  • why you would like to participate in the summer school,
  • how your research project relates to the topic of the summer school and how the summer school fits to your method toolbox or further research plans and
  • what you hope to get out of the summer school and what can you contribute (experiences, skills problems).

Send your application (and any questions you may have) to applications@eco-data.school by February 9, 2025.

Applicants will be informed in the first week of March.

We kindly ask participants to attend a mandatory online-meeting of all participants and lecturers on May 19, 2025 from 10am – 12pm.

Successful applicants will receive coverage for their travel and accommodation costs.

The Summer School is funded by the VW-Foundation's Research on Research program.

References:

• Gabrys, Jennifer (2016). Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. U of Minnesota Press.
• Hall, Peter A., and Patricio Dávila (2022). Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Poirier, Lindsay (2021). Reading Datasets: Strategies for Interpreting the Politics of Data Signification. Big Data & Society, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211029322
• Powell, Alison (2018). The Data Walkshop and Radical Bottom-up Data Knowledge. Ethnography for a Data-Saturated World. Manchester University Press, 212-232.