(Ottawa, January 3, 2012)—Eight international research funders from four countries jointly announced the winners of the second Digging into Data Challenge, a competition to promote innovative humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis.
Fourteen teams representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have been awarded grants to investigate how computational techniques can be applied to “big data” to change the nature of humanities and social sciences research. Each team represents collaborations among scholars, scientists and librarians from leading universities worldwide.
“The Digging into Data Challenge is an international initiative that enables Canadian researchers to take advantage of the huge digital resources now available and to develop close partnerships with overseas universities,” said Chad Gaffield, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). “These exciting projects cross both disciplines and national borders; they lead to new insights into human thought and behaviour.”
The first round of the Digging into Data Challenge, held in 2009, was sponsored by four international funders and led to breakthrough projects that received coverage in The New York Times, Nature, The Globe and Mail, and Times Higher Education. For the current round, there are eight sponsoring funders and a total of fourteen funded projects.
These projects cover a wide variety of topics that include using information retrieval techniques to investigate changes in Western music; using high resolution imaging to study the ancient Egyptian mummification process; using data-mining technology to shed light on the impacts of economic opportunity and spatial mobility on social structure; and using natural language processing to analyze large text archives in the study of human rights abuses.
“Initiatives and analysis of this sort were unimaginable before having access to today’s information and communications technologies. Today, scholars can data-mine millions of digital documents, gaining new insights into our world and culture,” said Gisèle Yasmeen, SSHRC’s vice-president, Research. “This research is truly international in its scope and is supported by eight funding councils.”
The eight research funders are the Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom), the Economic and Social Research Council (United Kingdom), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (United States), the Joint Information Systems Committee (United Kingdom), the National Endowment for the Humanities (United States), the National Science Foundation (United States), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (Netherlands), and SSHRC.
Total project funding is approximately US$4.8 million. SSHRC’s contribution of CAN$869,117 will support Canadian researchers from eight of the fourteen teams.
Additional information about the competition can be found at www.diggingintodata.org.
For more information on this release and other SSHRC joint initiatives, please contact:
Gail Zboch
Partnerships Portfolio, SSHRC
Email: gail.zboch@sshrc-crsh.gc.ca
Tel.: 613-943-1148
Michael Adams
Communications, SSHRC
Email: michael.adams@sshrc-crsh.gc.ca
Tel.: 613-944-1758
