New project unites digital humanities, Black studies, and data and computation
Black Beyond Data, a new project backed by a $300,000 Mellon grant, will seek to create an open resource for scholars to combat racial injustice through digital humanities
Credit: Getty Images July 15, 2021
There is a general belief that data is objective, neutral, and therefore accurate. Numbers don t lie, goes the oft-repeated maxim. But what about the people interpreting the data: can individuals really be objective or neutral? Who gets to decide which data is important? And what about the stories and truths that data can t tell?
A team of researchers, on a mission to address some of these weaknesses, has received a $300,000 planning grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their project, Black Beyond Data: Computational Humanities and Social Sciences Laboratory for Black Digital Humanities. By weaving together three digital humanities projects, Black Beyond Data connects the fields of