PRIVACY Researchers behind Advanced School for Computational History in Brazil

In 2020 Natacha Klein Käfer and Mette Birkedal Bruun received funding for the project Historical Notions of Privacy in Latin America from The Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science, the International Network Programme. The collaboration between the Centre for Privacy Studies and the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria is dedicated to exploring historical notions of privacy in Latin America and brings together the expertise of the Brazilian research team and the research methods developed by PRIVACY.

Since 2020 the project has been conducted online with conferences and a seminar series.
The next step of the project was to meet in person. In March, researchers from the Centre for Privacy Studies, and our DATA+ project PRIVACY Black&White, Natacha Klein Käfer (history of healing, Centre for Privacy Studies), Sanne Maekelberg (history of architecture, Centre for Privacy Studies), Nadav Borenstein (Ph.d.-fellow in Natural Language Processing, Department of Computer Science) and Karolina Stanczak (Ph.d.-fellow in Intersectional Language Bias, Department of Computer Science) travelled to visit our collaborators at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) in Brazil. While there, they taught the course “Advanced School for Computational History,” coordinated by Natacha Klein Käfer.
The goal of the course was to teach the students how to identify the most useful digital humanities tools for their research goals, how they work in principle and in practice, and where to find the necessary resources to dig deeper independently. The course had historians and computer scientists as instructors, covering technical, theoretical, and practical skills. The students ranged from Bachelor students to professors from the Department of History.

Centre for Privacy Studies will welcome a delegation from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in Copenhagen in September to conduct workshops on privacy in early modern Europe and Latin America.

We have asked postdoctoral researchers Natacha Klein Käfer and Sanne Maekelberg about their experiences teaching digital humanities in Brazil and their membership of the network programme.

What are your main gains from the trip?

Sanne:
The visit to the Universidad Federal de Santa Maria was an incredibly enriching teaching experience. The warm reception from everyone was remarkable, and it was fascinating to witness students and professors working and learning together as a group. While I had previously instructed students in the use of GIS and other digital tools solely through self-paced online tutorials and Q&A sessions, the Advanced School provided me with the chance to implement the material with students in-person, in a classroom setting. It was intriguing to observe what caught their attention and what prompted questions. For me, it was an amazing teaching experience.

Natacha:
Visiting the Advanced School for Computational History was a fabulous experience. The encounter with the Brazilian team – both the members of the Latin American Privacy Studies group and students of the Advanced School – was definitely the highlight for me. Having face-to-face interactions after such a long period of cooperation at a distance was incredible. I learned a lot as the course coordinator and instructor, and learning that there is an interest in bringing the Advanced School to other Brazilian universities was very rewarding. I think my experience was quite unique in that regard, as I was returning to my old university in Brazil, where I received a BA in history, after 13 years. Seeing how Universidade Federal de Santa Maria has evolved while facing the past decade’s challenges was incredible. Being able to bring something back to the academic environment that fostered me at the very beginning of my career was the main gain for me.

What kind of new insights did your course produce?

Sanne:
The section of the course that I presented centred on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Although I provided a brief theoretical overview, the workshop's primary emphasis was on practical exposure to the software. We utilized data that participants had prepared in the preceding workshop led by Natacha, successfully visualizing and mapping it. For historical GIS, the most challenging aspect is the "translation process" from historical sources to a digital format that software can comprehend. In general, digital tools for historical research require experimentation and collaboration. Historians must deconstruct questions and issues into components understandable by computers. The computer scientists' and historians' collaboration and communication, I believe, is where the real value lies, a lesson we were able to impart to the students who were already creating their own digital humanities group and exploring collaborations with their computer science department.

Natacha:
I felt that visiting the Advanced School was, at its core, an exercise in collaborative learning. I personally am continuously learning how to operate several of the digital humanities tools we brough up during the course, and working with the Brazilian team led me to questions that had not occurred to me before. We had computer scientists attend as our specialists, but it was also a new experience for them to teach in collaboration with historical researchers, so we all grew a great deal as scholars. I also remain in communication with many of the students in Brazil, which continuously gives us a chance to incorporate feedback and adapt to the technical, linguistic, and cultural needs of all the members of the collaboration.

What was it like to meet your Brazilian colleagues in person after all this time?

The attendees of the Advanced School left a lasting impression on me with their warmth and generosity. Despite being in the midst of their busy first week of the semester, both students and professors took the time to welcome us, give us a campus tour, and make us feel at home. We have forged new connections and I heard about so many interesting research topics that could lead to future collaborations.

What were the effects of your different cultural and academic backgrounds?

Sanne:
I feel like the general atmosphere was very positive, and everyone was motivated to work together and make the Advanced School a success. Throughout the three-day event, both students and professors were actively involved. Although we anticipated language barriers, we encountered additional obstacles when we realized their GIS software was in Portuguese, while mine was in English. However, with the assistance of Natacha as an outstanding interpreter, we cooperated to overcome this hurdle and find the necessary translations.

Natacha:
As the Brazilian representative of our Danish committee, I can only thank both my colleagues from the University of Copenhagen and from Universidade Federal de Santa Maria for making my job so easy. I thought a lot more cultural translation would be necessary, but both teams embraced one another and were eager to make things work. I felt like that was the true spirit of collaboration. Despite cultural differences, the atmosphere was generous, understanding, and patient despite the fast-paced rhythm of the activities.

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