The project
Understanding data: Praxis and Politics is a one year project funded by the EPSRC ( EP/R045178/1) and the HDI+ network. Here you can find a more detailed description of the grant. The aim of the project is to design, develop and pilot an OER (open educational resource) to support educators in improving their critical data literacies. The aim is to pilot the OER in four strategic pilot institutions who kindly offered their facilities. They are: Tangaza University College in Nairobi, Universidad de la República in Uruguay, Universidad Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona and Bath Spa University in England. These pilots will allow us to explore what works and what doesn’t so that we can refine/redesign the OER for a second iteration.
We live in a datafied society where decisions taken by corporations and governments are increasingly data and algorithm-driven. Whilst data are often said to be ‘collected’ as if pre-existing, and therefore simply reflecting reality, the processes through which data are generated and communicated are neither neutral nor devoided of negative effects. Richterich (2018) reminds us that data are socially constructed and embedded in their structures. Data are political. Therefore we need technical abilities and media literacies weaved into a critical approach to understand the socio-political and cultural mechanisms that affect individuals and groups in a datafied society.
The OER will provide educators with analytical tools to think about real-life situations and relevant content that will put them in contact with the most recent issues and research in the field.
Caroline Kuhn
Is an educator and open researcher with a particular interest in critical pedagogy (digital or not) and students’ agency in digital spaces. She is a PhD candidate and works as a senior lecturer (associate Professor) at Bath Spa University where she teaches at the School of Education.
She is the principal investigator for this project.
Leo Havemann
Ais a digital and open education specialist and researcher, a Digital Education Advisor at University College London, and a doctoral researcher at the Open University (UK). He is a member of the Advisory Board of the OK Open Education Working Group, a co-ordinator of the M25 Learning Technology Group (a SIG of the Association for Learning Technology), and is co-founder of the Open Education Policy Lab. He has a wide experience in capacity building in academic practices and in training academics to improve their practice in using pedagogical approaches in educational technology.
Cristian Timmerman
Since November 2020 he is a research associate at the Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Ulm University.
Studies in philosophy and political science at the Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich (Magister Artium 2007), PhD at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) with a thesis on “Life Sciences, Intellectual Property Regimes and Global Justice“ (2013).
Post-doctoral research fellow at the Jacques Loeb Centre for History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel (2013-14), at Institute for Philosophical Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2014-16) and at the Interdisciplinary Center for Studies in Bioethics at the Universidad de Chile (2017-20), with research stays in Manchester, Rom, Salzburg, Brisbane, Louvain-la-Neuve, Hastings Center and the Fondation Brocher.
Areas of specialization: medical ethics, research ethics, theories of justice, applied philosophy (agriculture, environment)
Javiera Atenas
A consultant in open data and open infrastructure.
Atenas is an information scientist and holds a PhD in Education. She is a senior fellow of Advance HE and is a principal researcher at the Latin American Initiative for Open Data. She is an associate researcher at the Universitat de Barcelona and has a longstanding experience in designing training and curricula in data and information literacies as well as a considerable amount of research in this field. She is a lead researcher for the Latin American initiative for open data and has acted as a consultant in Data Literacies for the Interamerican Development Bank and for The International Development Research Centre (IDRC). She is the director of the Latin American capacity building programme for public servants and has provided training in open data for academics and government officials in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
Juliana Rafaghelli
A consultant for the design of the learning activities in the context of professional development for HE.
Raffaghelli is a Research Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the Open University of Catalonia. She is a principal researcher on the national project “Professional Learning Ecologies for Digital Scholarship: Modernizing Higher Education by Supporting Professionalism” (National Ministry of Science, Innovation and University of Spain, 2018-2023). Member of the UOC-Edul@b research group (http://edulab.uoc.edu/en/). Her research interests are focused on the processes of opening up education and science, in connection to the problem of faculty development for the modernization of higher education. Recently she is analyzing experimental approaches to promote critical data literacy in HEIs.
