Humanities + Data Science Institute

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 emerging 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 Center for Digital Humanities (CDH) and supported by a Humanities Council Magic Grant, will empower Princeton scholars from the humanities (or humanities-adjacent social sciences) to engage with the conceptual, practical and ethical aspects of data science.

The five-day Institute will be accessible to faculty with no experience in code or data. Participants will gain hands-on experience in emerging methods in data science. They will become informed interlocutors who can demonstrate the potential as well as the risks of computational analysis in their own fields.

The Institute will also serve as a project incubator. During the Institute, faculty will design their own project that engages with data science methods or concepts. This could include:

• a course module
• a redesign of an existing course (such as a department’s introductory level undergraduate course)
• a data-driven exploration in their own domain

CDH staff will offer regular consultations for these projects throughout the summer and academic year, and participants will be well-poised to apply for additional campus or external funding to continue developing their projects.

Faculty attendees may invite a graduate student partner to attend the Institute, who will assist with project development.