D-Lab is excited to announce the publication of two articles and associated datasets on the Louisiana Slave Conspiracies Project (LSC). This is a project of collaboration from many of our D-Lab staff and student researchers, under the direction of Professor Bryan Wagner as the Principal Investigator (PI).
The LSC project is dedicated to preserving, digitizing, transcribing, translating, and analyzing historical manuscripts concerning two slave conspiracies organized at the Pointe Coupée Post in the Spanish territory of Louisiana in 1791 and 1795. Our research outputs include (1) complete bibliographic and demographic information as well as (2) geospatial place data that were extracted from trial records related to these two conspiracies:
Using Artificial Intelligence to Help Write Code
by Daniel Tan
ChatGPT is a natural language processing model that has applications in a wide variety of research settings. It is a chatbot-style tool that was created by OpenAI using a deep learning model that allows it to generate human-like responses to a wide variety of questions and prompts spanning a multitude of topics. Because it has been trained on a large body of text, ChatGPT is a particularly useful tool for programming. This post explores ways to use ChatGPT to help write code in Stata, a statistical software package that is widely used in academic and policy research.
A bipartisan Congressional bill titled "The Data Science and Literacy Act of 2023" would support a voluntary program at the Department of Education through which educational entities can apply for funding to increase access to data science and literacy education.
If you would like to sign this letter of support, please do! If you want to contribute your time, there are virtual advocacy days where you can discuss the bill's implementation with the staff of your Congressional delegation.
- Digital Humanities Events -
"The Long Land War"
Hybrid event, Mar 8 | 12:00pm
Social Science Matrix, 820 Social Sciences Building
Most nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa experienced some form of “land reform” in the twentieth century. But what is land reform? In her book, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights, Professor Jo Guldi approaches the problem from the point of view of Britain’s disintegrating empire. She makes the case that land reform movements originated as an argument about reparations for the experience of colonization, and that they were championed by a set of leading administrators within British empire and in UN agencies at the beginning of the postwar period. Using methods from the history of technology, she sets out to explain how international governments, national governments, market evangelists, and grassroots movements advanced their own solutions for realizing the redistribution of land. Her conclusions lead her to revisit the question of how states were changing in the twentieth century — and to extend our history of property ownership over the longue durée.
"Towards a Practice of Text-Mining
to Understand Change Over Historical Time"
Hybrid event, Mar 8 | 4pm-6pm
Social Science Matrix, 820 Social Sciences Building
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 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.
New Data Science Ethos:
An Ethical Framework and Research Process
This week, the Academic Data Science Alliance launched the Data Science Ethos - an interactive tool that fuses the research process with ethical lenses through which to examine data science research. The Data Science Ethos offers a more true-to-life model for data science that shows how societal questions are a constitutive part of the day-to-day work of a data scientist and guides students to fully incorporate ethics into their learning and work.
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 with any questions about this event.
Designing Usable and Useful Privacy Choice Interfaces
March 3 | 3:00pm-5:00pm
2150 Shattuck Ave, Suite 250
The Usable Security and Privacy Group with the UC Berkeley International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) has invited Professor Lorrie Faith Cranor, Carnegie Mellon University, for a talk at the ICSI space on Shattuck. This talk will discuss user-centric approaches to designing and evaluating privacy interfaces that better meet user needs and reduce the overwhelming number of privacy choices. Professor Lorrie Faith Cranor will present a privacy choice mechanism evaluation framework and several examples of privacy interface design and evaluation from my research, including more usable cookie consent banners, mobile app privacy nutrition labels, IoT privacy and security labels, and a privacy options icon for the State of California.
HTML/CSS Toolkit for Digital Projects
May 3 | 2:10pm-3:30pm | Register here.
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.
College Writing in the Age of AI
Virtual Event | March 10, 1pm-2pm
Join a conversation with the Center for Teaching and Learning and instructors from the College Writing Program focused on the potential impact of generative AI programs such as ChatGPT on writing assignments and how to address it. In our discussion, we’ll consider:
With the knowledge of what ChatGPT can produce, how might you adjust your writing assignments?
How can you develop writing assignments that incorporate feedback and milestones throughout the writing process?
What are ways to talk about ChatGPT and AI more broadly in the context of Academic Integrity with your students?
Campus Tech Job Fair
March 7, 1pm-3pm
Dwinelle Plaza
The Campus Tech Job Fair introduces undergraduate, graduate and professional students to 300+ student jobs in areas such as business, marketing, customer service, data analysis, user experience (UI/UX), technology consulting and more across campus IT. Join us on March 7, 1-3 pm at Dwinelle Plaza to learn more about these opportunities where you can develop your skills and gain professional experience.
Come to see the D-Lab represented at the fair, and reach out to dlab-admin@berkeley.edu if you'd like to help us represent!
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.
The San Francisco Estuary Institute
to Hire a New GIS Specialist
The San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) is seeking a GIS Specialist to join the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) team. A successful candidate will be enthusiastic, self motivated, and passionate about applying technical GIS skills to address environmental problems. You will collaborate with your colleagues to ensure an optimal relationship between science and policy through innovative approaches to information collection, display, and analysis. Although a strong foundation of GIS skills is required, an environmental science background to enable effective landscape interpretation, change analysis, and mapping is ideal.
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.
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.
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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