Humanities + Data Science Institute

This program ran in spring 2022 and winter 2023.

Applied machine learning technologies — often branded as “artificial intelligence” — are now used for editing novels, assessing resumes, grading papers, and conducting psychotherapy. While humanists have been collecting data and analyzing it through computational methods for decades, the field of data science rarely includes humanists who would be able to provide a critical, historical, and ethical lens on the consequential research enabling these new technologies.

The Humanities + Data Science Faculty Institute, run by the CDH and supported by a Humanities Council Magic Grant, empowered Princeton scholars from the humanities to engage with the conceptual, practical and ethical aspects of data science.

Participants were chosen by application, and was accessible to faculty with no experience in code or data. During the five-day Institute, participants gained hands-on experience in emerging methods in data science with the goal of learning about the potential as well as the risks of computational analysis in their own fields.

The Institute also served as a project incubator. Faculty designed their own projects that engaged with data science methods or concepts, ranging from course modules or a data-driven exploration in their own domain. Faculty attendees were able to invite a graduate student to attend the Institute to assist with project development.

The curriculum for the Institute can be found here.

CDH offered regular consultations for these projects after the Institute concluded, and participants were well-poised to apply for additional campus or external funding to continue developing their projects.