Black Data Scientists and Computational Social Scientists: A Legacy Rooted in W.E.B. Du Bois
Long before data science became a field, W.E.B. Du Bois used data visualization to illuminate racial inequities. His groundbreaking 1900 Paris Exposition visualizations transformed statistics into compelling narratives about Black life in America. These hand-drawn charts, rich in color and detail, were early examples of computational social science—using data to challenge injustice.
Today, Black data scientists and computational social scientists continue Du Bois’ legacy, leveraging AI, big data, and social networks to drive equity and justice. Scholars like Ruha Benjamin, Safiya Umoja Noble, and William Isaac interrogate algorithmic bias, while organizations like Black in AI foster inclusion in the field.
At D-Lab, we celebrate this legacy—not just in February, but year-round—by supporting diverse voices in data science and computational research.
A Series of Statistical Charts Illustrating the Condition of the Descendants of Former African Slaves Now in Residence in the United States of America (1900)
The UC Berkeley Digital Humanities Working Group is a research community founded to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations in the digital humanities and cultural analytics. Our gatherings are participant driven and provide a place for sharing research ideas (including brainstorming new ideas and receiving feedback from others), learning about the intersection of computational methods and humanistic inquiry, and connecting with others working in this space at Berkeley. We encourage everyone to participate, regardless of your experience level. The DH Working Group is a welcoming and supportive community for all things digital humanities.
Teaching Truth, Resisting Erasure: Disability Politics in a Changing America
by Jane (Mango) Angar
Disability is a social construct shaped by systemic exclusion rather than an inherent impairment. Society predominantly views disability through medical and economic lenses, leading to discrimination and marginalization. Disability rights have been hard-won through activism, yet disabled individuals still face poverty, social isolation, and violence. Recent policy rollbacks threaten disability protections, requiring vigilance from educators and advocates. Historical patterns show that marginalized groups are often the first targets of oppressive regimes. Teaching history with truth and resilience is an act of resistance. Activism, awareness, and collective action remain crucial in defending disability rights and promoting social justice.
D-Lab is now publishing on Medium! Follow us to stay up to date on all D-Lab related written content, including our blog posts, thought pieces, and staff updates. We’ll also recommend interesting articles we find on Medium and beyond!
Berkeley IT will launch a pilot program in February to evaluate QuestionPro, a potential addition to our suite of survey tools. We are exploring this solution as a cost-effective alternative to help lower the overall expense of our survey services for the campus community, as the costs of Qualtrics continue to increase. We have 100 licenses available for the pilot and are looking for participants who currently use Qualtrics and are willing to provide feedback. If you or anyone in your department/college is interested in participating, please complete the interest form.
Why QuestionPro?
Its features are highly comparable to those of Qualtrics.
The cost for campus is significantly lower than Qualtrics.
It offers both a manual and an API-based migration tool for seamlessly transferring surveys and data from Qualtrics.
Participants will be expected to:
Use QuestionPro for their survey needs.
Provide feedback on the user experience, functionality, and any issues encountered.
Participate in brief QuestionPro surveys throughout the pilot period.
Training/Support: QuestionPro will offer an initial training webinar, which we will record for those unable to attend live. Our goal is to ensure everyone is comfortable using the platform. A support team will be available to assist during the pilot phase.
Pilot Duration: 16 Weeks, starting in late February 2025
The Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) is seeking Predoctoral Researchers to participate in our 2025-2026 cohort. The Predoctoral Researchers will work under general supervision of individual faculty in one of the following social science departments: communication, political science, psychology, or sociology. Predoctoral Researchers may assist at any stage of the research cycle, including conducting literature reviews, developing experiments or models, designing & implementing studies, cleaning, coding, and analyzing data, and/or preparing results for presentation or publication. Depending on the research project, Predoctoral Fellows may work with qualitative or quantitative data.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and must be submitted by March 10, 2025. The position's start date is July 9, 2025.
The UC Berkeley Opportunity Lab (O-Lab) is hiring a full-time predoctoral fellow (junior or assistant specialist) to work on one or more projects in the field of energy and environmental economics under the supervision of Professor Reed Walker and 1-2 other faculty members working in this field at UC Berkeley. This is a full-time position with a negotiable start date between June 2025 and September 2025. The position will be funded for two academic years. The RA appointment will be at the UC Berkeley Opportunity Lab, housed within the Center for Effective Global Action. The RA will benefit from a community of researchers at O-Lab, CEGA, the Energy Institute at Haas, and throughout the university.
The job will entail close collaboration during all stages of empirical research with faculty members at Berkeley, working in areas of energy and environmental economics. Current projects are focused on exploring the social costs of environmental externalities such as air pollution and how regulations to limit these externalities contribute to gains and/or losses to the economy.
Applications will be reviewed starting February 18, 2025. The final review date is March 24, 2025.
Please address inquiries to the Center for Effective Global Action at cega-hr@berkeley.edu.
Join labor economist Zachary Bleemer for a thought-provoking lecture on how limiting entry into high-demand majors—like computing, data science, and other STEM fields—affects students’ futures and economic inequality. Don't miss this important conversation on the role university policies play in shaping opportunities for students, especially those from lower-income backgrounds. Luncheon to follow!
We're excited to announce that the 13th BITSS Annual Meeting will be held at UC Berkeley on Thursday, February 27! This one-day event will bring together leading voices from academia, policy, and the scholarly publishing world to discuss new research and developments in research transparency, reproducibility, and ethics.
We are thrilled to welcome Brian Nosek as our keynote speaker. Brian is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science (COS), where he leads initiatives designed to increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research across disciplines. Brian will share his insights into how the research culture is evolving and what we, as a community, can do to push these changes further. We look forward to an engaging discussion on the role of institutions, researchers, and systemic reforms in fostering scientific progress.
COSSA’s Social Science Advocacy Day is back! Advocacy Day brings together social and behavioral scientists and science advocates from across the country to engage with policymakers. The stakes for research funding have never been higher as we enter a particularly challenging political and budgetary environment. Social Science Advocacy Day is a must for all stakeholders who care about the fate of federal funding for social and behavioral science research and who believe this research should be used to inform sound public policy.
This opportunity is available to individuals affiliated with a COSSA member organization. You can check your organization/institution's membership status here. Participants are responsible for making their own travel arrangements and accommodations.
For the Inaugural Sunrise Lecture on Media and Technology, hosted by the Department of German, we welcome Dr. Fabian Offert, Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Digital Humanities at UC Santa Barbara.
Following a trail of newly uncovered ideas about neural representation in the technical literature, from early attempts to model the human visual cortex to contemporary multimodal foundation models, Vector Media reconstructs how the subcutaneous ideology of the vector space came to dominate artificial intelligence research, how it informs the expansion of artificial intelligence into all areas of everyday life (as well as the natural sciences), and how it ultimately must be understood as a tool for the creation of neural exchange value: value that specific cultural objects obtain once they become part of a vector space, and that exists exclusively as a function of their neural commensurability.
Date: Thursday, March 13 @ 5pm-7pm Location: Dwinelle Hall 188
Hannes Bajohr will be giving a 25-minute presentation on Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts: The Reader’s Expectation after AI, and leading a 25-minute Q&A. Join us for lunch in person or join us on Zoom!
With the advent of large language models, the number of artificial texts we encounter on a daily basis is about to increase substantially. This talk asks how this new textual situation may influence what one can call the “standard expectation of unknown texts,” which has always included the assumption that any text is the work of a human being. As more and more artificial writing begins to circulate, the talk argues, this standard expectation will shift – first, from the immediate assumption of human authorship to, second, a creeping doubt: did a machine write this? In the wake of what Matthew Kirschenbaum has called the “textpocalypse,” however, this state cannot be permanent. Bajohr suggest that after this second transitional period, one may suspend the question of origins and, third, take on a post-artificial stance. One would then focus only on what a text says, not on who wrote it; post-artificial writing would be read with an agnostic attitude about its origins.
Date/Time: Monday, March 10 @ 12pm Location: Sutardja Dai Hall, Suite 621
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