Global Development Institute Blog

Big and Open Data for International Development workshop

Tuesday 12 July 2016, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK

This is a call for abstracts/presentations on big and open data for international development, with an initial deadline of 30 April 2016.

In recent years, there has been growing activity around the “data revolution” in international development including formation of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.  As ever-more and ever-faster data is available about trends, patterns and processes, then related decision/action systems will be significantly affected.  Growth in research in this field has been slower and much remains to be done, particularly in bringing a socio-technical perspective to the creation, processing and use of new forms of data in development.

The aim of this workshop is to share socio-technical, socio-organisational and critical research on “data revolution” trends: most notably big data and open data.  We hope the workshop will shape a future research agenda and form the basis for future research partnerships.

The following timeline will be observed:

  • 30 April 2016 – prospective presenters to submit an abstract of 200-400 words outlining their proposed presentation to: cdi@manchester.ac.uk
  • 8 May 2016 – presenters to be notified of response to abstract
  • 8 July 2016 – draft papers (desirable but not essential) to be circulated to workshop participants
  • 12 July 2016 – workshop in Manchester for presentation and discussion of papers

If you have any queries prior to abstract submission, do please ask.

Anita Greenhill, Richard Heeks, Jaco Renken, Pedro Sampaio

Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK

We acknowledge funding support for this workshop from the Alliance Manchester Business School and Global Development Institute of the University of Manchester