Category Archives: archiving research data

DataShare spotlight: Debates on slavery and abolition held by student debating societies at the University of Edinburgh, 1765-1870

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The best part of my job is looking through the new datasets submitted to DataShare, our open-access data repository. One of the first datasets that gripped me was; Debates on slavery and abolition held by student debating societies at the University of Edinburgh, 1765-1870.

This dataset is really cool because as well as being a valuable resource for future research projects, it’s extremely interesting to read, even as someone who doesn’t know anything about historical research. This readability is what makes humanities dataset submissions so fun to process.

This dataset summarises debates on chattel slavery and abolition by two of the University’s debating societies during roughly the last hundred official years of the Transatlantic slave trade. It includes motions and outcomes of the debates, as well as information about the people participating and the positions they took.

It’s easy to tell ourselves that people in the past caused unimaginable harm because they didn’t know any better. Maybe this impulse is a form of self-preservation, a way to deny our ancestors’ agency to protect them – and ourselves – from blame. The dataset reminds us that even at the height of the slave trade there were many people publicly voicing their opposition. The data give us some insight into how these men understood their own complicity in slavery and their responsibility in upholding or abolishing it.

It’s interesting to see, for example, that some debate outcomes were pro-abolition, but against immediate abolition. Or how a debate on whether it would be sound policy to abolish the African slave trade had a unanimously pro-abolition outcome in 1792, yet full emancipation didn’t come for over forty years.

Sample from table of data

A preview of ‘University of Edinburgh Dialectic Society debates on slavery and abolition, 1792-1870’. From Buck, Simon; Frith, Nicola; Curry, Tommy. (2024). Debates on slavery and abolition held by student debating societies at the University of Edinburgh, 1765-1870 [text]. University of Edinburgh. Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/7841.

The dataset comes from The Decolonised Transformations Project which aims to take a critical look at the University’s complicity and investment in slavery and colonialism, confront the legacies of these choices, and make concrete recommendations to address present-day structural racism. The project is a great example of how Humanities research can be translated into a wide array of resources to maximise its utility and reach. As well as traditional outputs like publications and reports, the research team has published datasets, done podcasts, and held workshops and talks for the wider community.

Decolonised Transformations – Confronting the University’s Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism

The datasets have been downloaded multiple times since they were shared in November, so I’m sure other people are finding this data as interesting as I am.

Evelyn Williams
Research Data Support Assistant

DataShare spotlight: Human MotionLess Dataset (HuMoLs) and the creative potential of research data

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For the second installment of the spotlight on DataShare blog posts, I would like to showcase a fascinating item containing videos of people not doing anything!

The dataset in question is titled “Human MotionLess Dataset (HuMoLs)” and was created by researchers Longfei Chan, Muhammad Ahmed Raza and Robert Fisher, who are based in the School of Informatics’ Institute of Perception Action and Behaviour. While on the face of it, people being still might not seem very dynamic, the research behind this dataset is trying to solve a difficult problem with a very useful outcome. Simply put, how do you tell when someone is lying still because they are doing something like sleeping, or if it is because they are unwell or have fallen? The videos in this dataset aim to try and train healthcare monitoring systems to help determine whether it is the former or the latter of these possibilities, with the priority being to uncover any critical medical conditions or to analyse chronic conditions.

A selection of still images taken from the videos in the dataset.

What struck me while reviewing the videos for submission was that beyond the usefulness of these videos to the research project, there was the potential for them to be adapted creatively. The videos have a deliberately “uncanny valley” aspect, due to using AI to deepfake participant’s faces in order to preserve their anonymity. The amusingly odd character to the videos made me imagine them being used in an Adam Curtis documentary, or in an Aphex Twin music video. Possibly even in an Adam Curtis documentary with Aphex Twin music over the top of it.

This raises the fascinating idea that there are rich sources of research data stored in open access repositories that could have a life beyond being reproducible, but could also be reused, repurposed and remixed into creative new pieces, adding value to both the research itself, and to the repositories where the affiliated data is stored. To demonstrate this possibility, I have edited some of the videos together, see below, and set them to music. The piece of music, “Redolescence” by Other Lands, has a dreamlike quality to it which both complements and recontextualises the videos into something beyond their originally intended use.

What other audio and visual materials are there contained in research data repositories waiting to be repurposed in a creative manner? Time (and much more talented creators than me) will tell!

The full dataset can be found on DataShare: Human MotionLess Dataset (HuMoLs)

The paper which the dataset supports: OPPH: A Vision-Based Operator for Measuring Body Movements for Personal Healthcare

Permission to use the music featured in this video was kindly granted by Gavin Sutherland, performing here under his artist name of Other Lands. The album which contains this track can be purchased on Bandcamp: Other Lands – Riddle of the Mode 

DataShare spotlight: History, Classics and Archaeology in DataShare

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To celebrate World Digital Preservation Day 2024, this is the first in a series of occasional blog posts which seek to shine a light on some interesting examples of datasets uploaded to DataShare, the University of Edinburgh’s open access data repository.

Research data that is deposited in DataShare comes from across the Colleges and Schools and can relate to cutting-edge scientific research or exploration of under-studied social worlds, however, we also receive valuable historical research data too!

A prime example of this is an item submitted by Professor Charles West, who is based in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, titled “Autun List of Local Churches, c. 1000”. As neatly described in the title, it contains a list of 144 churches in the diocese of Autun, France, which was made around the year 1000. An example of one of the churches, the Church of Saint Martin in Cordesse, can be seen in the photo below.

Photo of the Church of Saint Martin in Cordesse, France.

According to the item’s description: “The dataset provides the names in the list, the modern place-names, the departement these places are located in, their order in the original list, whether each church is attested in earlier documentation or not, and if so, approximately when.”

The item took on a new life when it was shared on Twitter (now known as X), where a user, William J.B. Mattingly, took the dataset and added latitudinal and longitudinal data to create a mapped visualisation shown in a video. This reuse is documented in the Altmetrics of the item, which details how a DataShare item has been shared or cited. It is also a neat demonstration of how data shared on DataShare can be reused in useful and creative ways!

The DataShare item can be found here: https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/7774

The Tweet with the data visualisation can be found here: https://x.com/wjb_mattingly/status/1813587749905072497

Keith Munro,
Research Data Support Assistant

Lunchtime Seminar Series – digestible bites of knowledge on data and computing tools at the University of Edinburgh

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For 2023/2024, Digital Research Services have organised a new iteration of the Lunchtime Seminar Series. These one-hour hybrid seminars will examine different slices of the research lifecycle and introduce you to the data and computing expertise at the University of Edinburgh.

The seminars have been designed to answer the most common questions we get asked, offering valuable bite-sized learning opportunities for research staff, postgraduate research students, and professional staff alike. You will gain an understanding of how digital research fits in with wider research support teams and good research practices. Your sessions will cover research funding, research planning, tailored skill development, data management and advancements in AI.

Oh, and did we mention there is free lunch for in-person attendees? That is truly the cherry on top.

DRS Lunchtime Seminars – 2024 Calendar

Have a look at the upcoming seminars:

Seminar 1: How to plan and design your research project better.                        22nd January 12:00 – 13:00

This session is all about making sure researchers head off with a strong start. Did you know that the University has tools that help you optimise your data management plan, with funder specific templates and in-house feedback? We will make sure you get the best use out of DMPOnline and the Resource Finder Tool. We will also introduce you to some key concepts in data management planning, research funding and digital skill development.

Seminar 2: How to store and organise your data properly.                                    27th February 12:30-13:30.

Discover how to best store and organise your data using University of Edinburgh’s tools: DataStore, DataSync and GitLab. If you work in a wet lab, you might be particularly interested in electronic lab notebooks. We will introduce you to the functionalities of RSpace and protocols.io. Finally, the University has just launched an institutional subscription to the Open Science Framework (OSF). You will discover that it is much more than a tool for data storage, as it can help manage complex workflows and projects as well.

Seminar 3: How to interpret and analyse your data efficiently.                              13th March 12:00-13:00

This seminar is mainly about big computers, such as UoE’s Eddie and Eleanor. Through EPCC, researchers can get also access to large scale national supercomputers, such as Archer and Cirrus. At the same time, we will show a glimpse on some developments on the AI front.

Seminar 4: How to manage, publish, share and preserve your work effectively.  2nd April 12:00-13:00

The final seminar is all about making sure your work is published and preserved in the best way. We will talk you through different (open access) publishing pathways such as Journal Checker, Edinburgh Research Archive, Read & Publish journal list, Edinburgh Diamond. We will also be talking about data repositories (e.g. DataVault, DataShare) and our research output portal, Pure.

For info and booking:
https://digitalresearchservices.ed.ac.uk/training/drs-seminars

Blog post by Dr Sarah Janac                                                                     
Research Facilitator – The University of Edinburgh