Grassroots Data Wranglers

Data in the digital ages is collected vertically – from governments, institutions, mainstream media organisations. But there are examples of initiatives trying to invert this order, taking over the means of data production and collection, to fill out gaps, to contest narratives that they consider to be false, and to challenge the terrain of power from the button-up.

With that aim, we have curated a Public Event to showcase some of these initiatives, employing grassroots methods for data inquiry, which we have called “Grassroots Data Wranglers”.

The main speakers in this Public Event will be grassroots researchers who have challenged conventions of data collection and have done it, sometimes in opposition to established data gatekeepers, to shed light on areas where information is obscured or inaccessible. The participants are independent institutions or civil organisations working in the UK and the Global South:

• Equipo Mexicano de Antropología Forense (EMAF)
• Code for Africa
• Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS), from University College London
• Dr Arely Cruz Santiago, from the University of Exeter

As part of CDH’s Social Data School of democratising research methods, this event is open to journalists, NGOs, unions, and on the others, who are interested in challenging given assumptions about how data is collected and processed.

Live Interpretation between English and Spanish will be provided on Zoom.