Collaborative Research
Today, our class attended a lecture and tour of the archives at the VKS studio. During the lecture, Jan Kok from IISH & VKS and Stefan Dormans from VKS spoke to us about collaborative research and their experience/background in the field. Jan Kok first gave us his insight on using new tools in the humanities and how new media has influenced the humanities. Some portals that he discussed included "Digital History" and "The Center for History & News Media", and how new media is adapted to research questions, data collection, and research collaboration.
The Questions (with focus on SOCIAL RESEARCH)
How can we improve collaboration between science and the humanities?
What are the benefits of using common research tools in group projects?
How do researchers actually collaborate and how can we observe people collaborating? What kind of tools can be developed to improve collaboration between researchers? How does one approach "social research"?
The researchers were taking a look at social research in 3 ways: history of the labour movement, history of daily life (minorities who did not leave record of themselves, non-mainstream cultures), and social science history (in regards to demography, economy, anthropology, etc). His group is currently trying to develop a project to synthesize information between research collaborators under the "hub" concept, which is pretty interesting. It is a system that uses data-archiving to share collected data and further analysis with peers (data exchange) with certain open-access rules. It was mind-blowing to imagine the years of research put into the "Global Labor History" project that is studying the labor relatoins "of the world". Jan said that project will probably take 10 to 20 years to complete... the researchers are looking at living standards, labour relations, occupational groups, family relations, conflicts, and associated organizations. The question that is left in my mind after hearing about the project details is "how do the researchers combine data from such various fields?" Under the umbrella "Global Hub" project, researchers in the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, and the United Kingdom are taking a look at occupational structure, historical wages and prices, anthropometric data, and GIS. Through their work, they are trying to draw conclusions and create a single portal to social science history research. I believe that Emily presented the following question to Jan and Stefan: how is data credited to certain researchers under this model? How are copyright laws worked into this portal/database?
Random fact: Around 97% of chemistry works are co-authored while only 3 - 5% of philosophy papers are co-authored. Guess there is currently a lot more collaboration in the sciences than in humanties in general.
With more of a background in the natural sciences, I find open-access to science journals such as Pub-Med to be extremely helpful in developing new research questions for research biologists. It is sometimes frustrating to find the perfect paper but then only be able to view the research abstract. Stefan answered that is it up to the copyright of the research group, to decide whether they want to open their collected data to the group or public after a few years or share it only with their peers. The monthly rate that made it too expensive for social research groups to view humanities journals is ridiculous. Association with a public university in the states gives us access to these journals, and we should really take advantage of this research tool. What is the incentive to share one's research? In natural sciences, I have seen many researchers "steal" other researchers' work by using their data in a journal to further their own research time and time again. Personally, I think it is beneficial for researchers to feed off one another's work because in the end, it all goes to create more public knowledge in the sciences. Public scholarship that benefits the community has already risen in genetics and hereditary diseases; people can go online to public databases to look up information about the human genome. At the same time, I completely understand the frustrations of years of research gone to "waste" within a matter of months of another biologist(s) taking a different approach and publishing a paper in "Nature" magazine.
Jan talked more about the research performed on historical wages and prices, discussing the difficulties. There are many problems in data standardization (metric systems, translations, etc) and the data is incomparable as a whole. The ultimate goal is to be able to create a comparison of living standards around the globe. Under compiling data about organizational titles, the research group is very interested in seeing the change in jobs between generations. Do children follow in their parents' footsteps, taking upon the same jobs that their parents had? Or are jobs changing with the economy, practicality, education? Another ongoing project is labor relations, which seems like a tough one with many roadblocks. Researchers are collecting data on the number of slaves in countries throughout history. They are also looking to create a worldwide census on each country/region of those who are self-employed, workers, shareholders, etc. One project I find particularly challenging yet engaging is the microlevel data. The group is digitizing the lives of 18,000 people by reconstructing the change in their lives from birth to death. Along with a population register, the foci are on marriages, births, deaths, servants in household, and moves, which must be reported. The LifeRay environment for sharing data seems efficient for collaborators-- it includes both a public and private area on the site. While some of the data is public, researchers must have a username and password in order to access data, papers, presentations, and analysis. Jan did tell us that the system still needs to be simplified or researchers need to take a workshop to be trained in how to use the database. It seems like a really good medium to share work between a group, building upon each other's conclusions/data.
Next, Stefan discussed distance and engagement in ethnographic studies and his role in the project. Within his roles, he is a critical analyst and a collaborative researcher in ethnography. What does ethnography research consist of? Observation in an objective matter along with participation which can be recorded in a subjective light. Observation is what Haylee and I have been primarily doing when reading the space of the fashion displays in Red Light District. We take a step back without engaging in the experience, making notes of the aesthetics, location, surroundings, and reaction of tourists/natives/passerby to the displays. With interviews, we have been more participatory, talking more openly about our thoughts, curiosities, and asking questions to collect data. While being an observer is viewing data through a critical lens, social research is always subjective in the end. It is difficult to step back without being engaged in the situation. Perhaps being more participatory lowers the credibility of the research quality. As for our projects, I still feel like an outsider in Amsterdam, trying to understand the culture and even looking for Dutch culture manifested in fashion (fashion as communication). With limited time, we are really relying on the expertise, personal opinion, and vast knowledge of the current issue from interviewees.
Archive Videos:
Afterwards, we took a 45 minute tour through the archives at IISH (International Institute of Social History), which was an incredible collection of the widest array of items from history one could ever imagine.
Archive items:
-Pins
-Clothes
-Rugs
-Postcards
-Documents
-Books
-Scrolls
-Letters
-Posters
-Random odds and ends
-Etc...
Of the interesting things we saw during the tour, my favorite part was getting to see (and smell!) squatter clothes from the 80's. Everything at the archives was categorized in rooms by size, category, time period... I wonder, why are there so many items from the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the archives in Amsterdam? Pretty interesting... I hope to go back one time with classmates to take a further look at the IISH archives. While in the midst of fieldwork, I have gained appreciation of the hard work and challenges researchers in the humanities and social sciences must overcome and work through to conduct research. Before I came to Amsterdam, my uncle, a biocultural anthropologist, was telling me about his experiences with fieldwork and roadblocks he experienced when he was studying minorities in China. He sent me an email a few days ago, excited to hear about my A'dam experience as well as research progress. After reading Haylee's blog and her thoughts on changing her project to a unique aspect of Amsterdam, I feel really glad that we both have an interest in studying the current issue of fashion shops moving into ex-window brothels in the Red Light District.
During out time in Amsterdam, I am often reminded of Belinda and how much she enjoyed her experience in Amsterdam (she was part of the '006 "Honors in Amsterdam" group). Yesterday, I took a second look through her pictures. It made me smile to see that we had both taken pictures at some of the same locations-- landmarks, canals, streets, restaurants, etc. Oh, I also saw pictures of the Rotterdam conference, which is coming up very, very soon.
Group Barbeque:
Photo Credit for "Group Barbeque" (X2) and "Eiffel Tower": Kelsey
In the evening, we all headed to PG to enjoy a group potluck BBQ! Lauren and Isaac, among others, were amazing cooks and made delicious burgers, chicken, and veggie kabobs; props to them, thanks guys! It was a nice start to the three-day weekend. Professor Paul Wouters and Petra joined our class; Professor Wouters spoke to us at the barbeque. He reassured us about our presentations at the Rotterdam conference, giving us of insight on his recent experience presenting at the conference this past week. I definitely felt a bit more relieved about presenting in front of an academic audience. He reminded us that the conference will be somewhat informal and not to take it personally if someone walks out during your presentation. My personal greatest fear is public speaking, and I hope I will be able to get through the conference without freezing up or blabbering too much. It was reassuring to hear that our professors and peers are our main audience and that each of our projects were limited by our short time in Amsterdam. I am looking forward to see the progress of all the projects during this upcoming week; each group is learning a great deal about an aspect of the culture of Amsterdam and experiencing the methods and roadblocks of social research. Overall, it has been a rewarding experience with seeing the progress of the project and how all the data my group has collected is coming together.
Tomorrow is the start of the three-day weekend, with some people staying in A'dam with a Sunday day-trip to the Hague and others going on short trips to Berlin or Paris.
Happy Birthday, FIONA!!! Lucky girl, celebrating her birthday in the city of love. Off we go to explore Paris, see the Eiffel lit up in the night sky, view the city from atop Montmartre, celebrate Fiona's Birthday, & much more...
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