Diversity in Data

by Anna Björklund. In this post, Anna Björklund investigates the origin of the linguistic study of indigenous American languages, its inextricable ties to settler-colonialism, and how linguistics can move forward as a field.

by Patty Frontiera, Ph.D. D-Lab is excited to announce the publication of two articles and associated datasets on the Louisiana Slave Conspiracies Project (LSC). This is a project of collaboration from many of our D-Lab staff and student researchers, under the direction of Professor Bryan Wagner as the Principal Investigator (PI). The LSC project is dedicated to preserving, digitizing, transcribing, translating, and analyzing historical manuscripts concerning two slave conspiracies organized at the Pointe Coupée Post in the Spanish territory of Louisiana in 1791 and 1795. Our research outputs include (1) complete bibliographic and demographic information as well as (2) geospatial place data that were extracted from trial records related to these two conspiracies:

by Chevon Holmes. When California voters (de)criminalized cannabis production, the state’s dual licensure requirement forced local jurisdictions to create permitting programs or uphold prohibition. Many Counties developed ersatz zoning ordinances to regulate cannabis activities and hired staff to administer local permits. As an inspector, administrator, and project planner for Mendocino County from 2017-2021, I visited hundreds of cultivation sites and production facilities where I learned first-hand how two legal pathways impacted the ways in which operators could transition their businesses. This post details a dataset created to track, aggregate, and analyze the relationship between cannabis infrastructure and licensing.

By Alejandro Nuñez. Today’s digital age has created a sea of endless datafication where our everyday interactions, actions, and conversations are turned into data. The advancements of automated artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and their infrastructure in which they are created and trained on, have catapulted us into an era of consistent monitoring and surveillance.