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.
The Digital Humanities Working Group is led by David Bamman (School of Information), Stacy Reardon (Literatures and Digital Humanities Librarian), and Tim Tangherlini (Department of Scandinavian) and is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities.
"Towards a Practice of Text-Mining
to Understand Change Over Historical Time"
Hybrid event, Mar 8 | 4pm
Join us for the next Digital Humanities lecture by Jo Guldi: "Towards a Practice of Text-Mining to Understand Change Over Historical Time: The Persistence of Memory in British Parliamentary Debates in the Nineteenth Century." A world awash in text requires interpretive tools that traditional quantitative science cannot provide. Text mining is dangerous because analysts trained in quantification often lack a sense of what could go wrong when archives are biased or incomplete.
Professor Guldi’s talk will review a brief catalogue of disasters created by data science experts who voyage into humanistic study. It finds a solution in “hybrid knowledge,” or the application of historical methods to algorithm and analysis. Case studies engage recent work from the philosophy of history (including Koselleck, Erle, Assman, Tanaka, Chakrabarty, Jay, Sewell, and others) and investigate the “fit” of algorithms with each historical frame of reference on the past.
The Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) seeks a motivated Associate to support the Center’s Cost Transparency Initiative. The Associate will: provide research assistance for several projects focused on cost data collection, economic evaluation, and policy analysis. The position will report to and work closely with Dr. Elizabeth Brown and will collaborate with other CEGA staff as needed. While this position is based in Berkeley, there will be periodic fieldwork assignments in several low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries.
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Seeks an Institutional Research Analyst
The Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) Data Team supports UC Berkeley's campus strategy around undergraduate education and the student experience. This institutional research analyst position in the immediate office of the VPUE would be a particularly exciting position for those passionate about improving undergraduate education with an equity focus. This position would be part of the Data Team which provides insights to leadership within the division and across campus by the collection, analysis, visualization, and presentation of data.
Graduate/Undergraduate Scholarships
with Extended Deadlines for Haas Scholars/SURF
The Haas Scholars Program welcomes applicants in an extended deadline. Successful applicants will receive benefits of up to $13,800 in funding, a close-knit community of peers to support you, alumni in your desired profession who can give you guidance, opportunities to present your research, financial support for your faculty mentor to recognize their commitment to you, and structure to keep you moving on your project!
Not eligible for the Haas Scholars Program? No problem! You can apply for the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) L&S fellowship (due 3/10), the SURF Rose Hills fellowship (due 3/10), grants via the Center for Race and Gender, the Mellon Mays fellowship for underrepresented social science/humanities sophomores considering a PhD (priority deadline 2/24), the Firebaugh Scholars Program (priority deadline 3/1/23), and the Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) for biology students (due 2/15/23).
Student Volunteers Requested
for the Student Technology Council
The Student Technology Council (STC) provides graduate, professional and undergraduate students a forum to advise the Chief Information Officer and senior IT leaders about the holistic student technology experience. Areas of focus include:
UC Berkeley Department of Statistics
Hiring a Lecturer
The Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley invites applications for a pool of qualified temporary instructors to teach the following courses should an opening arise. Screening of applicants is ongoing and will continue as needed. The number of positions varies from semester to semester including summer sessions, depending upon the needs of the Department. General duties include developing syllabi, lecturing, writing assignments, writing and grading exams, supervising teaching assistants, holding office hours, and maintaining a course website. Other duties may be assigned by the Chair as necessary.
ACCESS Operations is launching its cyberinfrastructure Student Training and Engagement Program (STEP) will function as a three-phase program intended for undergraduates or early-career graduate students interested in pursuing careers in cyberinfrastructure.
Envisioned as a way to provide students with training on marketable skills in the areas of operations, data and networking, and cybersecurity, STEP aims to promote the development of a diverse, competitive STEM workforce by providing opportunities to students, with a focus on recruiting and enrolling students from underrepresented groups (Black, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian), and those who identify as women.
For questions about applying or about cyberinfrastructure careers generally, please reach out to ACCESS Campus Champion, Aaron Culich at D-Lab.
Predoctoral Position Open
at Harvard's Department of Sociology
Professors David Pedulla and Daniel Schneider (Department of Sociology and Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University) are recruiting one full-time predoctoral research fellow to start in summer 2023. The fellow will support and collaborate on multiple survey and experimental projects related to work and social inequality, assist with data cleaning and analysis, and contribute to research reports and papers. The successful applicant will receive mentoring from faculty and have access to a broad range of activities at Harvard. This opportunity is likely to provide experience that will be particularly relevant for individuals interested in pursuing a PhD in Sociology, Psychology, Economics, or Public Policy. Appointment terms for Fellows are for one year with the strong potential for a second year renewal.
Research Associate with the University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research (ISR) is pleased to announce a new cohort-based program for recent college graduates who have a passion for social science research. The Junior Professional Researcher (JPR) program offers an opportunity to gain work experience in a dynamic, multidisciplinary environment. Candidates from underrepresented backgrounds or historically underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.
In addition to gaining valuable hands-on experience, the JPR cohort will be a community for fostering connections and a welcoming environment for scholars. ISR faculty members will mentor cohort members as they take the next steps toward their research careers. Regular seminars and social events will provide learning and networking opportunities.
Roundtable Series:
"Learning How to Play with the Machines"
Feb 24, 11am-12:30pm | South Hall Room 202
Hybrid event | Join on Zoom here
The Berkeley Natural Language Processing Group will host again The Cassandra Project, which organizes a roundtable discussion series which engages experts in both political and computational science from multiple universities across the United States. Participants discuss the commonalities, divergences, and hopes for the two fields, tackling difficult topics such as the limits of automatic analysis and applications of big data.
Digital Publishing Series Events
"Can I Mine That? Should I Mine That?": A Clinic for Copyright, Ethics & More in TDM Research
March 8 | 11:10am-12:30pm | Register here.
HTML/CSS Toolkit for Digital Projects
May 3 | 2:10pm-3:30pm | Register here.
UCB Monthly Cloud Computing Meetup
Feb 23, 1pm-2pm | South Hall Room 202
Virtual event | Join on Zoom here
This month features augmented reality and podcasting in the cloud, with the Ethnic Studies Changemaker project, presented by Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, a lecturer in the Ethnic Studies department along with four students, Sarai Montes, Liz Toledo, and Nigel Hawkins. The Ethnic Studies Changemaker project is currently working on a series of initiatives that incorporate augmented reality and podcasting.
Digital Chicanx: The first project is the completion of the third volume of a digital journal dedicated to Chicanx Studies and works produced by students in the courses. The Digna Rabia digital journal uses Adobe InDesign to produce a journal that showcases the podcasts and oral histories of students in the Mexican and Central American Migration Fall course.
UC Berkeley Campus History Augmented Reality: The next project is a public AR project, funded by the Berkeley Collegium Grant. It uses Adobe Aero to produce a campus augmented reality (AR) public history scene.
Ethnic Studies Library Archives Augmented Reality: Finally, four dedicated students are working on creating a prototype AR application similar to Artivive for use with various archives at the Ethnic Studies Library on campus.
BITSS Workshop: Forecasting in the Social Sciences
March 2, 2023
Led by Stefano DellaVigna (UC Berkeley) and Eva Vivalt (Australian National University), the 2023 workshop will bring together leaders from across academic disciplines to present new research findings, share knowledge, and continue charting a path forward for prediction in the social sciences. The Social Science Prediction Platform, which has over 4,500 completed forecasting surveys for over 50 projects, is facilitating the collection and cataloging of forecasts for the broader research community.
Contact Grace Han at grace.han24@berkeley.edu with any questions about this event.
Women in Data Science (WiDS) at Berkeley
Mar 7 | 9am-4:30pm
The annual Women in Data Science at UC Berkeley conference is returning to an in-person format for the first time since 2020! Keynote speaker: Ysis Wilson-Tarter, Staff Data Engineer, Absci. All genders are invited to participate in the conference, which features exclusively female speakers.
The Global Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference is an annual technical conference based at Stanford University, which brings together data scientists and professionals in adjacent fields from around the globe to discuss the latest research and applications of data science in a broad set of domains. Participants learn how leading-edge companies are leveraging data science for success and connect with potential mentors, collaborators, and others in the field.
In partnership with the main conference, WiDS Berkeley features on-location events with distinguished speakers from the Bay Area in academia and industry and a student poster session highlighting ongoing student projects.
Xlab supports UC Berkeley’s world class research by providing resources such as access to participant pools, experiment coordination, payment support, access to softwares, grants, and more. It also provides technical and administrative support. For more information about Xlab, click here!
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