DES Sandpit B: Knowing and Deciding with Data

Please note: This event is for UCL Staff and PGRs only - when registering, use your UCL email address.

What to expect

• A half day of collaborative idea-sharing and innovation around one of the 'data empowered societies' key themes.

• Networking with colleagues and the Grand Challenges team, including DES academic leads Professor James Hetherington and Professor Allison Littlejohn.

• Lunch with attendees to reflect on the morning's discussions.

What is the goal of the sandpit?

This event will provide a forum for discussion and collaboration, creating an environment for a cross-disciplinary group of academics and practitioners to come together to foster innovation and creativity in research design.

This approach mirrors a core value of the Grand Challenge programme, the ethos of supporting and promoting challenge-led research that is innovative, interdisciplinary, bold and societally impactful.

About 'Knowing and Deciding with Data'

This theme is for staff who are interested in/working on:

The processes and efficiencies of decision-making across all sectors, private and public, where data is used.

How data is stored, processed, shared and used in societally-relevant areas such as healthcare, education, sustainability and justice.

Example topics:

• Data-led resilience against e.g. climate change, antimicrobial resistance, cyberattacks, conflict, economic challenges
• Responding to crises
• Promoting informed discourse and politics
• Planning for the future.

Society urgently needs to address global issues around key themes that exacerbate inequalities around the world: healthcare, sustainability, and climate change. Abundant data is opening opportunities for new ways of knowing and decision making and changes are taking place at an accelerated pace.

Many of these changes are focused on and designed around technology and data, rather than prioritising human-driven approaches that place human needs first, foregrounding equity, ethics and social responsibility. Important questions include how to prioritise human needs when developing new ways of knowing and deciding and whether resilience can be nurtured through data.

For more detail on what this theme involves, have a look at this article written by the DES academic leads (Professor James Hetherington and Professor Allison Littlejohn).

We would like to encourage UCL colleagues interested in building collaborations and projects around this theme to attend the sandpit.

Funding opportunities

Following this sandpit, and two other sandpits to explore the other DES sub-themes (Working and Learning and Data and Social Change), we will be announcing details of a Grand Challenges pump-priming funding call. Project ideas and collaborations forged through this sandpit will be very well-placed to develop proposals to bid for this funding. Please note: to ensure a fair application process, funding offers will not be made at the sandpit.

Any questions?

Please contact Max Gillingham (max.gillingham@ucl.ac.uk) if you would like any further information.