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Collaboration with Uni Graz on Digital Methods: Ethnographic Research and Data Visualization in the Balkans

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Graz2nDr. Arnaud Kurze (center), Assistant Professor at Montclair State University, explaining visualized data clusters to participants.

Between July 1-2, 2016 the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz held a workshop on digital methods in the humanistic social sciences in collaboration with Montclair State University. It brought together participants from the United States and Europe to explore contemporary sociopolitical issues across the Mediterranean Basin and Southeast Europe using digital research technology. The workshop goal was to strengthen cross-regional and interdisciplinary collaboration, introducing new conceptual frameworks and novel ways of conducting research in the humanistic social sciences.

Methods that were discussed during the workshop included data mining, data visualization and text analysis, among others. Based on interactive, praxis-oriented sessions, participants were introduced to innovative, critical social research methods to capture and assess social, political and cultural phenomena, including contentious politics, memory politics and transitional justice during regime change and in post-authoritarian and post-conflict settings.

The timely event was organized in part to respond to the political turmoil in the region. For instance, the impact of the global financial crisis on Southeast Europe, the ramifications of the post-Arab Spring repressions across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and the institutional crisis of the European Union, among others, highlight the need and opportunity to analyze these complex social issues with the help of new digital methods.

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David Brown (left), Uni Graz, and Dr. Christopher Lamont (right), University of Groningen, discussing research findings.

Various sessions provided an opportunity for participants to showcase their individual research projects, such as the project of David Brown on visual cultures and protest in the Balkans. Scholars shared their research findings and received valuable feedback from colleagues on different conceptual, methodological and empirical aspects of their studies.

Moreover, guest speaker, Dr. Arnaud Kurze, Montclair State University, introduced a digital open-source text analysis software called SVEN, which combines qualitative and quantitative data analysis. It is an experimental tool to collect, organize and analyze text fragments from online and offline documents. As such, it is an excellent tool to respond to the technological needs of a data-driven world, providing precise analytical solutions to collect and assess data. SVEN’s work flow is simple. It increases the information accessibility via visualization methods and automatic term extractions. As a result, it allows researchers to trace emerging social phenomena through time and allows for a better understanding of the collected data, which facilitates the data evaluation process. SVEN is also useful to elaborate policy strategies to help address sociopolitical issues.

In sum, the workshop harnessed social scientists working on a variety of sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural issues with new ideas to better capture correlational and causal complexity. In addition, it provided specific tools for mixed methods, including text analysis, data mining and data visualization. As a result, it fueled potential future research collaboration  between scholars from various disciplines, including political science, sociology, history and linguistics, among others, and has strengthened the existing ties between Montclair State University and the University of Graz.

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Workshop participants wrapping up a session on the open-source text-analysis tool SVEN.

Click here for workshop flyer.

Post-Conflict Societies, Memory Politics and Digital Methods

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Montclair State invited renowned historian, Dr. Vjeran Pavlakovic, Assistant Professor at the University of Rijeka in Croatia to give a lecture and workshop on transitional justice, cultural remembrance drawing from a digital humanities approach to dealing with the past. During his brief visit to the US from April 28-29, 2016, the guest speaker was able to meet with Montclair students, faculty and administrators to strengthen university ties. A collaboration between both institutions was already established in summer 2015 when Montclair faculty, Dr. Arnaud Kurze, Assistant Professor of Justice Studies, participated at the Cres Summer School on Transitional Justice and the Politics of Memory with several Montclair students. (The Montclair Magazine featured the 2015 trip in its fall issue).

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Dr. Pavlakovic lecturing on a digital humanities project called FRAMNAT, looking at memory politics and commemoration in the Balkans.

As a Balkan scholar, Dr. Pavlakovic explained that commemorations and other political rituals are key components of a nation’s cultural memory, critically influencing the construction and reinforcement of ideological, ethnic, economic, sexual, and other identities. The Yugoslav successor states experienced three major wars, numerous territorial changes, and experiments with political systems from parliamentary democracy and monarchism to fascist dictatorship and state socialism in the twentieth century. The contested histories of World War Two and the still-living memories of the war in the 1990s permeate both domestic and foreign politics, and the ongoing manipulation of these traumas make transitional justice initiatives even more crucial for creating long-term stability.  The wars of the 20th century, with their heroes and victims, play a central role in the framing of the various post-Yugoslav nationhoods. Within this culture of war, regional reconciliation (and at times even basic cooperation) is nearly impossible to achieve.

Dr. Pavlakovic's Framing the Nation (FRAMNAT) project, which is financed by Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ), analyzes both top-down and bottom-up strategies of forming collective identities and creating a nation-building and nation-consolidating narrative through commemorative practices. The objective is to explore the challenges facing transitional justice initiatives in the Yugoslav successor states, and assess how commemorations of war can hinder or contribute to reconciliation efforts through some specific case studies.

 

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Data set based on digitized newspaper articles for a commemoration site in Bleiburg, Austria.

During the workshop at Montclair, the focus lay on outlining the methodologies used for the FRAMNAT project, and explore more generally the question of new developments in digital humanities that can be applied to memory studies. Furthermore, participants seized the opportunity to discuss potential cooperation between scholars developing a digital humanities program at the University of Rijeka and the digital methods initiative at Montclair State University for future projects and exchanges.

Click here for a flyer of the event.

International Collaboration on Digital Humanities

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In September 2015, faculty from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with those from College of Science and Mathematics hosted a conference and workshop on digital humanities. The event was organized by Arnaud Kurze, assistant professor of Justice Studies, and sponsored by research startup funds from Office of the Provost. The goal was to offer Montclair faculty a praxis-oriented experience to introduce new, innovative social science methods to capture complex social phenomenon in our data-driven world. To this end, Kurze invited two international research scholars for his project “Mapping Complexity in the Social Sciences: Big Data, Social Media and Data Visualization,” Donato Ricci, Research Assistant Professor of Digital Tools and Methods for Visualization at Sciences Po in Paris, France, and Daniele Guido, researcher at the Center for European Integration in Luxembourg.

Over two days, the event brought together international programmers, designers, developers and researchers from across multiple disciplines to explore innovative forms of studying and analyzing large, complex amounts of data and social media. The Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Robert Friedman opened the event. He’s an advocate for digital humanities in an era when the humanities are at risk.

Dr. Robert Friedman, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University.

Dr. Robert Friedman, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University.

“One of the goals I have for this college is to nurture these activities and projects,” he said, continuing that, “the digital humanities are a practical response to challenges that face the disciplines.” Following the Dean’s encouraging words, Kurze, who specializes in research on youth activism and social movements during the Arab Spring, outlined his research approach that combines ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative text analysis.

Describing his research to the participants of the workshop, he asked: “How does knowledge travel in the age of information technology? And does it actually foster change although we cannot necessarily see it at the political level?”

Dr. Donato Ricci, Research Assistant Professor of Digital Tools and Methods for Visualization at Sciences Po, France.

Dr. Donato Ricci, Research Assistant Professor of Digital Tools and Methods for Visualization at Sciences Po, France.

Afterwards, Ricci gave his capstone lecture, mapping key methodological issues when conducting research in the digital humanities. He is also the founder of a text-analysis software called Sven, an experimental tool to collect, organize and analyze text fragments from online and offline documents.

Ricci emphasized that “it is not important to build complex tools, technologies or standards, but instead we have to rethink how we are looking at our research object.”

In this context he referred to online tools like Google as compelling sources of information for research. Questions addressed during his talk included: What forms of visualization are most suited for particular data sets? How do we process big amounts of data effectively and present them coherently and compellingly? His presentation answered this these questions and more.

On day two, Daniele Guido elaborated on the study of networks, concepts and actors. The evolution of his research center and projects are deeply embedded in historical processes. He said, “Politicians in Luxembourg, a country at the heart of Europe, were proud to be in the center of the integration process. Thus, they started collecting documents. Luxembourg’s Prime Minister in the 1970s, Pierre Werner, for instance, collected over 10,000 documents.”

In this context, Guido introduced the web platform histoGraph, a tool that helps researchers explore large multimedia archives. This platform also enables users to find and identify the most relevant documents for research and helps discover connections between individuals based on the selected documents in the archive.

Daniele Guido, researcher at the Center for European Integration in Luxembourg explaining his software.

Daniele Guido, researcher at the Center for European Integration in Luxembourg explaining his software.

At the end of the morning session, Katherine Herbert and Jerry Alan Fails, both associate professors of Computer Science at Montclair State University, presented their research on big data and mobile phone applications to raise awareness about environmental issues. They described their personal cross-disciplinary research collaboration and stressed the need and the opportunities for establishing collaboration platforms that also include citizens, in addition to scientific cooperation. Fails raised the question: “How can you engage the citizen in the science?” Their collaboration platform is a first step into this direction.

Along with these lectures, participants had the opportunity to delve deeper during highly interactive and individualized afternoon sessions. Different projects and datasets were discussed in small groups, and the organizers provided valuable feedback participants to adequately and efficiently use new tools for research in the digital humanities. The interdisciplinary and innovative nature of this workshop served as a catalyst to foster future collaborative research projects not only on the Montclair campus, but also beyond.

Click here to download the conference agenda.

This post was first published on the Montclair State University website on October 31, 2015,  available here.