Call for Participants | Summer School 2024: ‘Exploring Culture Through Data’

Are you looking for an enriching experience during your summer holidays? Do you want to broaden your horizons and learn a whole new skillset? Are you interested in working with rich datasets, but have no idea where to start? Then look no further than the Data School summer course 2024!

From Monday the 5^th to Friday the 9^th of August, Data School offers a full week of hands-on workshops and inspiring guest lectures. By the end of this week you’ll be able to work with digital methods to collect, analyze and visualize complex data sets. The focus will be on collecting and analyzing your own data. The skills from this summer school can be applied across many different types of data and fields of research. Think of methods such as web scraping, data visualization, a crash course in programming in Python, and much more. Throughout the week, you’ll work towards a final project that sees you applying the methods to a real-life case study of your choice.

What’s in it for you?

During this week, you learn about the data practices that make up so much of our everyday lives. You receive training in digital methods and data analysis with which you can analyze the ever advancing datafication of society. Participants get acquainted with some of the (methodological) fundamentals of Digital Humanities, like data collection, data selection and web scraping. Prior experience with digital methods are not necessary. We do expect a strong willingness to learn.

The week will also be filled with lectures by prominent guest speakers from various backgrounds. At the end of the week you’ll work together in groups to put your new skills to the test in a real-world case.

Students – and non-students – of all disciplines are welcome! Our team consists of media and literary scholars, philosophers and AI scientists – among others – who all benefit greatly from the use of digital methods, and a critical understanding of our datafied society.

Successful completion of the Data School summer school will result in 2 ECTS credits and will be rewarded with a Data School summer school Certificate of Participation.

You can apply for the Data School summer school at the Utrecht Summer School website.

Reasons to apply

• A chance for humanities students and (beginning) researchers to learn about the fundamentals of digital methods, in a hands-on fashion. It will enrich your methodological understanding, both practically and theoretically.
• This summer course will be at entry level, and the learning curve will be steep. We are committed to the educational character of this summer course, so participants will have extensive tutelage. We truly believe that this could be the start of your Digital Humanities or Critical Data Studies career!
• For (international) students who are enrolled in the Master’s program New Media and Digital Culture or Applied Data Science in Utrecht, but lack the computational methods skill set, or have no clear understanding what data-literate research within the humanities means, this summer school is strongly recommended. The students will get a head start on working with computational tools. The program will be complimentary to – but not overlapping with – the Master’s program.

Date and location

When: The summer course take place from Monday the 5^th until Friday the 9^th of August 2024. The classes will take place every day from 09:00 to about 17:00.

Where: The summer school will take place on location, at the Data School office and the Digital Humanities Workspace. Both locations are in the city center of Utrecht, within very short walking distance.

What do you get?

• 2 ECTS
• Teaching and study materials
• A certificate after successful completion
• Lunch

Application Procedure

How to apply

If you are interested you can apply by going to the Utrecht Summer School website. Your application should contain your (academic) background (CV) and a brief motivation for applying (motivation letter).

After submitting, you will receive a notification that we successfully received the application. Subsequently there will be a selection procedure based on the applicant’s file. You will receive confirmation of admission by email within five working days. The email will also provide you with further information on the summer school and payment methods.

Selection Procedure

Students of all disciplines are welcome, as well as non-students. Although the summer course is at entry level regarding computational methods, we do expect a certain level of academic maturity. Therefore, we will not admit students with less than 67,5 ECTS at bachelor level.

The number of participants is limited, so don’t wait too long to apply. We hope to see you this summer!

Contact

Any questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us: dataschool@uu.nl.