This project originated in May 2020 with the numerous calls for the collection of disaggregated data along multiple axes of identity, many of which were amplified by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This includes calls to collect race-based data; sex-disaggregated data; data including Indigenous communities; those who are differently-abled; and those in the LGBTQI/2S community; among others. Less well understood or addressed are the ways in which this kind of data collection fails to incorporate the social construction of race as a category; the politics of collecting identity-disaggregated data; the ways in which context can be stripped from datasets; the effects of surveillance on populations and communities; and how public citizens might be called into these activities on a voluntary basis. Some of these latter concepts might be held under a “data justice” conceptual umbrella in which “…fairness in the way people are made visible, represented and treated as a result of their production of digital data is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world” (Taylor, 2017).

To explore the many follow-up questions arising from the increasing need to collect data and the ways in which community organizations might go about this work, the Gender+ in Research Collective (UBC ORICE) launched a research “engagementship” in which multiple cohorts, building on each others’ work, addressed a number of questions related to data justice and community-based research, and how community organizations might engage with these concepts. 

Five cohorts have now worked with us on this project, attending teach-ins, workshops, and conducting their own research on how the concepts of intersectionality and data justice are engaged in community-originated research. The work of the first five cohorts has now coalesced into a ‘community guide’ whose primary focus is to introduce the concept of ‘data justice’ to community organizations who work with data, or are looking to work on a data-based project, by providing definitions, examples, and reflexive questions to engage with. Striving for accessibility and usability, this guide takes the form of a PDF file, a website, and a series of posters. 

Recruiting for this, the sixth cohort of this project will work with both regional and international community organizations/partners to share and distribute this guide amongst pre-existing networks of trust. Far from pretending to reinvent the wheel of data collection and management processes, this project acknowledges that community organizations already work with data and seeks to identify points of convergence between current methods of data collection, and Gender+ lenses.  

We are looking for dynamic and engaging communicators who have previous experience in community organizing and who are passionate about ‘making visible’ the issues that surround data justice. 

Scope:

Throughout the term, a team of 4-5 students will spend 3-5 hours each week to think through a distribution strategy and organize a series of events/initiatives that will ‘put the guide out into the world’ and achieve maximum accessibility. To conduct this work, students will be asked to engage in various activities, including, but not limited to: participating in weekly scheduled calls, strategizing the accessible distribution of this guide to a diverse range of stakeholders, planning and hosting interest-sparking events, facilitating guide-related workshops, leading a social media campaign, and constantly collecting/working with the ideas and feedback generated in this process. 

Deliverables & Milestones:

The team will familiarize themselves with the guide and with the assets created by the previous cohorts. They will also strategize the distribution plan that they will follow (social media campaign, planning of the workshops delivery, etc.). Over the course of the term, the students will lead their distribution strategy by hosting the events, facilitating their workshops with the concerned organizations, engaging on social media, and being attentive to (as well as proactive with) the ideas and feedback generated in the process. By the end of the term, students will be asked to provide a final report with resources for continued engagement (for instance, a workshop facilitation plan) and give a short presentation to the Gender+ in Research Collective about their key learnings. 

While the program’s facilitators have drafted the program structure and suggested milestones for the project, students will be given the flexibility to co-design and modify their final outcomes as they deem relevant and in coordination with ORICE project leads. The students participating in this cohort of the Gender+ collective will be supported by ORICE team leads throughout the duration of this project.

Academic integration:

Please note this is a not-for-credit unpaid opportunity. If you are interested in making this a student-directed study course, please contact ubc.orice@ubc.ca to discuss the process to explore this option.

Anti-Racism and Ethics of Engagement:

The Gender+ in Research Collective and the Office for Regional and International Community Engagement (UBC ORICE) are committed to embedding anti-racism in our daily work and ongoing projects. Students are encouraged and expected to consider how they can take an anti-racist lens to the work they produce around citizen science, data collection and use, and connections between community-based organizations, academics, and government. This might include, but is not limited to, ensuring the incorporation of the ongoing and often unrecognized work of organizations advocating for justice for minorities, particularly during the pandemic; or engaging with the politics of citation in including and citing the work of non-white scholars and other researchers. 

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Taylor, L. (2017). What is data justice? The case for connecting digital rights and freedoms globally. Big Data & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951717736335

The Gender+ in Research Collective acknowledges that we organize, research, and learn on unceded traditional  xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory. We understand that both gender and research have been used as tools of colonization on these lands, and commit to working towards disentangling gender+ research from colonialism and Indigenous genocide.