What is feminist data science? How is feminist thinking being incorporated into data-driven work? And how are scholars in the humanities and social sciences, in particular, bringing together data science and feminist theory in their research?

Drawing from their recent book, Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a set of principles for data science that are informed by decades of intersectional feminist activism and critical thought. To illustrate these principles they will discuss a range of recent research projects, including some of their own. Taken together, these examples demonstrate how feminist thinking can be operationalised into more ethical, more intentional, and more capacious data practices, in the digital humanities, computational social science, human-computer interaction and beyond.

Meet our speakers and chair

Catherine D'Ignazio (@kanarinka) is an Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT. She is also Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, which uses data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial equity. Catherine is a scholar, artist/designer and hacker mama who focuses on feminist technology, data literacy and civic engagement. Her 2020 book, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren F Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science practices.

Lauren Klein (@laurenfklein) is an Associate Professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University. She works at the intersection of digital humanities, data science, and early American literature, with a research focus on issues of gender and race. Lauren is the author of An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States and, with Catherine D’Ignazio, Data Feminism.

Fiona Steele is a Professor and Head of Department at LSE's Department of Statistics. Her research interests are in developments of statistical methods that are motivated by social science problems. Fiona was awarded the Royal Statistical Society Guy Medal in Bronze in 2008 and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009.

More about this event

The Department of Statistics (@LSEStatistics) is an international community for the development of statistical methodology. The department is home to experts in statistics and data science, and has an illustrious history of contributions to research and teaching in the social sciences.

You can order the book at Data Feminism.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEDataFeminism

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Data Feminism: what does feminist data science look like?

A video of this event is available to watch at Data Feminism: what does feminist data science look like?

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