The Methodological Unit organizes a weekly Brown Bag Seminar to highlight novel methodological approaches in humanities and social sciences. The idea of the meetings is to introduce methodological innovations and cutting-edge research in various disciplines in an easily accessible manner and have an interdisciplinary discussion in an easy-going atmosphere over lunch. Bring your own lunch, we bring fresh methodological topics!
Every Wednesday at 12.15.
Exceptions: Brown Bag Seminar is on a summer break – the seminar events will start again on 27.8.2025.
You are welcome to join us at seminar room 524, Fabianinkatu 24 A (access via door, not courtyard), 5th floor, or online via Zoom.
There will be a 20-minute introduction to the methodological theme, followed by an open discussion of 40 minutes. The seminars are open to everybody. We expect a multidisciplinary and methodologically curious audience from different faculties and units of the central campus. The language of the meetings can be Finnish or English.
The most important prerequisite for participation is not methodological expertise, but an open mind towards new methodological innovations and discussion across methodological and disciplinary boundaries.
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Click here for more information on past Brown Bag Seminar and Brown Bag Lunch events.
Philosopher Achille Mbembe once remarked that Africal holds a paradoxical position in modern formations of knowledge. On the one hand, he writes, “it has been largely assumed that "things African” are residual entities, the study of which does not contribute anything to the knowledge of the world or of the human condition in general.” Yet, on the other hand, he also notes, Africa has always been also perceived as a kind of laboratory that can help “gauge the limits of our epistemological imagination or to pose questions about how we know what we know and what that knowledge is grounded upon (Mbembe, 2010, p. 654).”
University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the University of Edinburgh recently launched a new SARChi SA-UK Bilateral Chair in Digital Humanities, appointing Professor Gagliardone as its inaugural holder. The aim of the 5-year Chair is to advance more inclusive and equitable digital futures in social sciences and humanities research globally. Building on the long critical tradition of research in South Africa, the Chair aims to reposition Africa as hub of conceptual, technological and methodological innovation amidst the current boon in the use of AI in social sciences and humanities by highlighting how historically marginalised forms of knowledge can inform humane and socially just approaches to digital transformation and digital humanities research.
Matti similarly recently received Africa Programme seed funding for his ongoing project “Generative AI and Africa: New Methodological Directions for Social Sciences and Humanities Research (GAINS).” This project aims to critically explore the use of generative AI and large-language models (LLMs) for social sciences and humanities research in Africa. By experimenting with custom-trained AI models and fostering collaboration between Finnish and South African institutions, it seeks to enhance research methodologies and facilitate knowledge exchange globally.
Building on this ongoing dialogue between HSSH, University of Helsinki and University of Witswatersrand, this talk openly discusses some of the challenges in such North-South collaboration in social science and digital humanities. What are some of the theoretical, methodological and empirical questions that are raised and how can critical research potentially help address this? What are the limits of our epistemological imagination?
Iginio Gagliardone in the inaugural SA-UK Bilateral Chair in Digital Humanities at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a fellow of Wits’ Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute. He is the author of “The Politics of Technology in Africa” (2016) and “China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet” (2019). His most recent work examines the international politics of Artificial Intelligence and the emergence of new imageries of technological evolution in Africa.
Matti Pohjonen currently works as a Senior Researcher for the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH), University of Helsinki, working with methodological development on the use of internet and social media data, including debates on generative AI and LLMs. He also currently co-leads The EU Horizon-funded project ARM, which focuses on information suppression and information freedoms in China, Russia, Ethiopia and Rwanda as well as InfoLead, which is a digital literacy project and an online tool targeting judges and policymakers developed together with the University of Oxford and University of Florence.
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The Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship (CRDDS) at the University of Colorado Boulder is an interdisciplinary research center focusing on research data infrastructure and expertise. CRDDS is built on a partnership between the University Libraries and Research Computing, and represents an uncommon fusion of units on the academic and operational sides of the university from various disciplinary and professional backgrounds with a common mission to empower researchers navigating the research data lifecycle on campus. This work is achieved mainly through collaborative grant opportunities, workshops and seminars, and certificate and micro-credential programs. In addition to giving an overview of our work, I will outline the ways in which CRDDS is experiencing the shifting federal research and higher education landscape at the university and within the scientific context in Boulder, which includes university centers, labs, institutes, and other units as well as federal laboratories.
Thea Lindquist is Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship at the University of Colorado Boulder, an interdisciplinary center specializing in expertise and infrastructure for data-intensive research and education and in open publishing. Her research interests include integrating historical and computational approaches in the study of 17th-century European history and data curation for interdisciplinary and highly collaborative research.
Please note! This Brown Bag Seminar event is exceptionally only in person at HSSH Seminar Room, Fabianinkatu 24 A, room 524, 5th floor (access via Fabianinkatu, not courtyard).
This talk presents both empirical findings and methodological insights from the Belgian interuniversity research project TACOS, which investigates preschool teachers’ language-supporting competencies through a multimethod approach. The study uses mobile eye-tracking (MET) to examine, before and after a professional development intervention, the question: Which children are being overlooked, and with what consequences for their language development opportunities?
In a randomized controlled trial with a posttest-only comparison group, we captured 1,300 minutes of classroom interaction involving 65 preschool teachers and 575 children. Multilevel negative binomial regression models revealed systematic inequalities in teacher attention: linguistically vulnerable children—those perceived by teachers as having low speaking confidence, weaker language skills, and/or a different home language—received less attention. Importantly, results provide novel evidence that teachers’ attention allocation can be positively influenced through targeted professional development.
The talk will address the following themes:
Thibaut Duthois is a Belgian doctoral researcher at Ghent University, working on educational inequality and teacher professionalization under the supervision of Prof. Ruben Vanderlinde, Prof. Maribel Montero Perez, and Prof. Piet Van Avermaet. His main research interest lies in early childhood education, with a particular focus on uncovering mechanisms of inequality at the teacher level. To this end, he employs mobile eye-tracking technology to study teachers’ visual attention and interaction patterns in the classroom.
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Whose Angels? is a project funded by the Kone Foundation that integrates photographic art with interdisciplinary research, encompassing the study of religions, art history, and folkloristics. The project aims to investigate contemporary vernacular and popular imagination and worldviews. We utilize contemporary fine-art angel-themed phogographs, created by our artist Hanne Kiiveri, as prompts to elicit thoughts and feelings from diverse audiences. These photographs have been exhibited in various venues and presented to a range of audiences during workshops. The responses—opinions, memories, critiques, and associations—gathered from viewers serve as research material, primarily documented in real-time. Additionally, some audience members have volunteered to collaborate with the artist in designing new angel images, and this creative process has also been recorded as part of our research, including interviews, observations, and the final artworks. One of the objectives of our project is to explore and assess this kind of ethnographic methodology (in which we first construct our case and then study it) and its potential for future research.
Terhi Utriainen is professor in the Study of religions at the University of Helsinki. Her interests include ethnographic study of contemporary vernacular religion, religion, gender and embodiment, and ritual studies. She has recently directed the project Learning from new religion and spirituality (funded by the Research council of Finland 2019-2023) and presently directs the 3,5-year project Whose Angels? funded by the Kone Foundation.
Oscar Ortiz-Nieminen holds a PhD in Art History and a MTh in the Study of Religion. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research interests lie in the intersections of religions and worldviews with visual culture and with the built environment.
Click here for practical information on the Brown Bag Seminar events.