"Data Journeys in Biomedicine: Data Use, Research Translation and the Management of Infrastructures"

In particular, we wish to focus on the development of large datasets and databases, and their relation with the research practices that they are designed to support, foster, inform and organize. Multiple perspectives are needed to understand and triangulate between, among others, the premises and rationales for the development of infrastructures and the assemblage of large datasets, the relationship with the wider ecologies in which managed datasets are embedded and used as evidence base, the role of information technology in their management, and the effects of these solutions on scientific practice, the construction of knowledge, and institutions and communities within and beyond academia.

One significant feature of science conducted through digital data infrastructures is the variety of processes, knowledges, material and human resources, skills and techniques that need to intersect in order to move data across settings and thus offer new opportunities for analysis and re-use. This workshop brings together a range of experts on this topic, including leaders of exemplary infrastructures, and scholars in science and technology studies, philosophy and history of science and medicine, information systems and computer science. Our goal is to enhance existing understandings of (1) the ways in which biomedical data are produced, disseminated and used; (2) the scientific, social, economic and cultural embedding and implications of such processes; and (3) the extent and manner in which interdisciplinary collaborations across the natural and social sciences, and the humanities, can inform these processes and ensure their sustainability and long-term fruitfulness.

The workshop is part of a series sponsored by the European Research Council, through the project “The Epistemology of Data-Intensive Science” led by Sabina Leonelli. More information is available on www.datastudies.eu. Places are limited and all costs will be covered by organisers.