(C) The Conversation This story was originally published by The Conversation and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . LibGuides@Southampton at University of Southampton Library [1] ['Isobel Stark'] Date: 2026-02 The theme of this year's international Love Data Week is 'Whose Data Is It, Anyway?' The data landscape has reached an unprecedented scale, yet questions around data sovereignty and ethics are still critical in our appraisal of data usage. The annual Love Data week is a chance for the academic community to take stock and contextualise their use of data within their research community. For Love Data 2025, we’re encouraging people to question “Whose Data Is It, Anyway?” In addition to the various events taking place internationally, the University of Southampton library’s Research Data Team is excited to announce our main event for Love Data Week 2025. During this event, we will have two extended talks focusing on researchers who have hands on experience with handling sensitive data as well as lightning talks from researchers who are working in this area. Creating community narratives through research: The ethical use of sensitive data Keynote: Theodor Hirschberg, the Holocaust, and the ethics of representation, Charlie Knight Like most large academic libraries, the Hartley Library at the University of Southampton holds several special collections. One of these is the Anglo-Jewish archive linked to the Parkes Institute at the University. The manuscript collection is devoted to the history of relationships between Jewish and Non-Jewish communities and is one of the largest collections of its kind in Europe. As such, it holds a large volume of potentially sensitive data. The ethical use of sensitive data from a deceased individual is a nuanced process requiring a careful balance of respect, purpose, transparency, and consideration for the living community connected to the data. In this session for Love Data week 2025, we will hear from a researcher who has handled the ethical considerations of this work, what he learned from the experience, and the outcomes of his research. Charlie Knight is a PhD candidate at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton. From 2021-24 he was funded by the Wolfson Foundation Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, and is currently a fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute funded by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. During his PhD, Charlie used the papers of Theodor Hirschberg, in archive MS314 within the collection, to inform his work on the correspondence between displaced German-Jewish families during the Second World War. The collection contains personal correspondences between family members and friends and was mostly written after Theodor Hirschberg had arrived in London, spanning a period of 1939-41, and expressing concern for those remaining in Germany as well as attempts to support them. Charlie has kindly offered to share with us his experience of using these materials and how he integrated the process of handling this sensitive data into his research in an ethical way. Keynote: Qualitative criminology, prisons, and the Open Research agenda, Ben Jarman Recording video The second half of the event will be led by Ben Jarman, a Research Fellow in the School of Law at the University of Southampton. Ben’s work explores the experiences of long-term prisoners and the moral implications of extreme punishments in the UK. Ben will discuss some ethical considerations arising with qualitative data derived from prison interviews, and consider what implications arise for the Open Data agenda more generally. Lightning Talk: Design Archaeology: on the Smartwatch, Aybala Cakmakcioglu Aybala Cakmakcioglu is a Teaching Fellow in the Global Advertising and Branding programme at Winchester School of Art. With a background in industrial design and brand communication, Aybala’s research spans digital culture, everyday life, and the philosophy of technology. Her PhD thesis, titled ‘Design Archaeology: on the Smartwatch’ aims to form a holistic understanding of the smartwatch as a contemporary product since it has the potential to reveal the tangled dynamics between people and technology. The research explores present phenomena by benefitting from the past with a design archaeological approach. By exploring recurring patterns and historical parallels, her work offers valuable insights into digital culture by exploring concepts such as quantified self and information discipline. Lightning Talk: CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, Laurisa Sastoque Pabon Recording video Laurisa Sastoque Pabon is Digital Preservation Training Officer in the Digital Humanities Team at the University of Southampton. She will talk about the CARE principles for handling data which were originally proposed for indigenous data but can be useful when dealing with data collection from any marginalised group. Prior to joining the university, Laurisa received an MPhil in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge where her dissertation work was comprised of a digital mapping project on the subject of the Colombian diaspora in the United States and the United Kingdom and the drug trade. Laurisa is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, and has also lived in Evanston, Illinois, where she completed her undergraduate degree in History, Creative Writing, and Data Science (Minor) from Northwestern University. In her spare time, Laurisa enjoys travelling, hanging out at coffee shops, and fantasizing about the dog she will (one day) adopt. Lightning Talk: Turning your Spreadsheets into a swanky, sustainable website, Chris Gutteridge Recording video Chris Gutteridge has worked in University of Southampton data and web systems since 1997, when Electronics and Computer Science hired him as a webmaster. He was lead developer for version 2.0 and 3.0 of the EPrints software and because of this was involved in the early days of the open access movement. He set up the University of Southampton open data service, for which he accepted a THE award on behalf of the University. In 2018 Chris was awarded the Jason Farradane award in recognition of outstanding contribution to the information profession. With his team in iSolutions, he has created a framework for creating sustainable websites based on research datasets which has been used by several university projects including Sounding Erdig and Music in the Second Empire Theatre. [END] --- [1] Url: https://theconversation.com/uk/events/love-data-week-2026-at-soton-where-is-the-data-15418 Published and (C) by The Conversation Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/theconversation/