Making a Difference. Societal Impact through Collaborative Research (April 7th-8th, 2025)  Two-day workshop-driven conference for fostering long-term collaborative research partnerships between academia and the professional field   Collaborating with external partners allows university researchers to closely study real-world phenomena while supporting effective interventions and knowledge transfer. As universities increasingly aim to engage with various societal sectors,…

Last week, Data School launched the first networking event of its upcoming Impact Projects. Want to learn more about the Impact Projects? Click here to read more!

For the past 10 years Data School has been at the forefront of researching the impact of AI in society. Working across disciplines and in close collaboration with external partners we conduct research around two main research pillars: Responsible Data Practices & AI and Media Policy and Public Debates. We are committed to producing impactful research that…

Team lead: Karin van EsTeam: Daan van der Weijden, Jeroen Bakker What do you imagine when you hear the word “data center”? You might think of a hall filled with endless rows of server racks and flashing lights, or a massive grey box emerging from a grassland, or perhaps something even more abstract, like something…

Data School will cooperate with the Helsinki Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH). For the coming three years 2022-2023, Mirko Tobias Schäfer has been appointed a Visiting Professor to University of Helsinki. Mirko will cooperate closely with the groups of Minna Ruckenstein and Matti Nelimarkka. Mirko’s research interest revolves around datafication of citizens, government…

Principal investigator: Karin van Es (Data School) Co-applications: Mirko Tobias Schäfer and Joris Veerbeek (both Data School), Kees van Deemter (Information and Computing Sciences), Ayoub Bagheri (Methodology and Statistics), Beatrice de Graaf and Pim Huijnen (both History); PhD ‘Employing text classification models for journalistic inquiry on public debates‘ – Joris Veerbeek, MA Together with Dutch…

Starting March 1st, 2022, Data School (Data School) will become part of the Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) at Utrecht University under the joint deanship of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities.  Investigating the implications of AI and datafication for our digital society requires concerted interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary efforts. Over the past…

Het publieke debat vindt in toenemende mate online plaats: op platformen die bekend zijn bij het grote publiek zoals Facebook en Twitter, maar ook op niche-platformen waar een kleiner deel van de bevolking gebruik maakt, zoals Telegram en Reddit. De gebruikers van deze platformen vormen geen grote, grijze massa, maar bestaan uit deelpublieken die elk…

De tweede onderzoekslijn waar Data School zich in specialiseert is data ethiek, oftewel, verantwoorde datapraktijken, algoritmes en AI. Met de invoering van de AVG in 2018 is meer bewustzijn gekomen voor de vraag ‘wat willen we eigenlijk met technologie?’ naast de vragen over technische mogelijkheden (‘wat kunnen we?’) en juridische grenzen (‘wat mogen we?’). Om…

This text is a translation of the original publication at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Network Society. In September 2021, Bennet Etsiwah, research associate in the research group “Data-driven Business Model Innovations” at the German Weizenbaum Institute, was a visiting researcher at the Data School (Data School). In the following report, he explains what this…