Data Services

Spring 2024

• Jessica Lasky-Fink, Research Director at The People Lab (Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University), on using insights from behavioral science to improve government service delivery.
• Shira Zilberstein, PhD Candidate in Sociology at Harvard University, on the process of creating machine learning models for healthcare and the organizational tensions influencing the process.

Fall 2023

• Christina Langer, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and Doctoral Researcher at the HKS Project on Workforce, on the value of apprenticeship skills in the labor market.
• Lauren Brodsky, Senior Director of the HKS Communications Program and Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS, on her co-authored book Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself: A Practical Guide to Telling Persuasive Policy Stories (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).
• Forrest Hangen, PhD Candidate in Public Policy at Northeastern University in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, on studying housing inequities with big data.
• Hong Qu, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy and Research Fellow at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at HKS, on social media misinformation discourse.

Spring 2023

• Felix Owusu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at HKS’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, on the limits of relying on administrative data alone to understand people’s lived experiences in the criminal legal system.
• Christian Testa, Statistical Data Analyst at Harvard School of Public Health, on his work with the Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project 2.0.
  • Video publicly available on YouTube.
• James Capobianco, Research & Data Librarian at HKS Library & Research Services, leading an introduction to machine learning in R workshop.
• Sharad Goel, Professor of Public Policy at HKS, on access and equity in college admissions.
• Belle Lipton, GIS Outreach Librarian at the Harvard Map Collection, leading two introduction to GIS workshops.

Fall 2022

• HKS Growth Lab Development & Design Team (Annie White, Steven Geofrey, Brendan Leonard, and Nil Tuzcu) on visualizing economic data with Metroverse and the Atlas of Economic Complexity.
• Courtney Hall, former Director for Impact Assessment and Evaluation at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative at the Bloomberg Center for Cities, on maximizing imperfect data for decision-making.
• Reva Dhingra, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, on how quantitative and qualitative methods complement each other in her research on the politics of refugee-related aid in Jordan.
• Victoria Asbury, cultural sociologist and PhD candidate in Sociology at Harvard, on experimental and survey approaches for understanding the structures of American hierarchy.
• HKS Library Research & Data Services Team (James Adams, James Capobianco, & Megan Potterbusch) on using the HKS Library for data-driven & computational research.
• Whitney Airgood-Obrycki (Senior Research Associate) and Sophia Wedeen (Research Analyst), Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, on rental market trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. More on Whitney and Sophia’s work:
  • America's Rental Housing 2020.
  • Rental Deserts Perpetuate Socioeconomic and Racial Segregation (2022).

Spring 2022

• Justin M. Feldman, social epidemiologist and Health & Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, on the under-counting of deaths in U.S. police custody. More on Justin’s work:
  • Quantifying Underreporting of Law-Enforcement-Related Deaths in United states vital statistic and news-media-based data sources: A capture-recapture analysis (PLOS Medicine, 2017).
  • Why Coroners Often Blame Police Killings on a Made-Up Medical Condition (Mother Jones, 2020).
  • How Paid Experts Help Exonerate Police After Deaths in Custody (New York Times, 2021).
• Amanda Hallock, Digital Transformation Specialist at the City of Scranton and HKS Alum (2020), on digital transformation in smaller U.S. cities.
• Stephen Leonelli, LGBTQI+ policy expert and HKS Alum (2016), on data-driven program design for LGBTQI+ inclusive policy.
• Jeremy Ney, author of the American Inequality newsletter and MIT Sloan/HKS Alum (2021), on data visualizations of U.S. inequality.

Fall 2021

• Whitney Battle-Baptiste (Professor of Anthropology and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst) and Britt Rusert (Associate Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst) on their co-edited book W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (2018, Princeton Architectural Press).
  • Harvard affiliates can view the ebook online or borrow a print copy via HOLLIS.
• Tugba Bozcaga, Fellow with the Middle East Initiative at HKS, on innovative research methods for the political economy of development.
• Annette Zimmermann, Technology & Human Rights Fellow with the Carr Center at HKS and political philosopher at the University of York, on “The Power of Choosing Not to Build: Justice, Non-Deployment, and the Purpose of AI Optimization.”

Spring 2021

• Charles Amuzie, Digital Director at Color of Change, on CoC’s data equity work around the 2020 Census and beyond.
• Robyn Hillman-Harrigan, Racial Justice Research & Program Manager at UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and Critical Data & AI Equity Director at Feminist.AI, on data science for intersectional economic equity.
• Rachel Ludeke, LMSW, PhD Candidate & Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, on using qualitative methods to amplify the narrative voices of marginalized youth in the foster care system.

Fall 2020

• Melissa Jones, member of the Coronavirus Visualization Team at Harvard, on data visualization of socioeconomic and health disparities within marginalized communities during COVID-19.
• Moses Karanja, PhD Candidate in Political Science at University of Toronto, on digital identification data in Africa and its encounters with global finance practices.
• Khahlil Louisy, President of the Institute for Technology & Global Health and Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center at HKS, on data-informed COVID policy design regarding the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on marginalized communities.
• Sabelo Mhlambi, Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center and Technology & Human Rights Fellow at HKS' Carr Center, on using indigenous ethical models to create an equitable internet.
• Jennifer Pierre, UX Researcher and PhD, on data-centered participatory research design and epistemic burden.

Spring 2020

• Gabby Lim, Researcher at the Shorenstein Center’s Technology & Social Change (TaSC) Project, on using data to study information controls.
• Jennifer Weintraub and Pablo Morales Henry, #MeToo Project team at Schlesinger Library, on archiving social media & movement data.

Fall 2019

• Steph Nguyen, Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, on data literacy and privacy.
• Alessandra Seiter, Community Engagement Librarian at HKS Library & Research Services, on smart cities and participatory planning.
• Matt Smith, Principal Data Scientist with the City of Boston, on civic data.
• Annie White, Senior Product Manager at the Harvard Growth Lab, on using data to inform sustainable economic development.

Spring 2019

• Nasser Eledroos, Technology Fellow with the ACLU of Massachusetts, on data-driven advocacy.
• L. Kelly Fitzpatrick, Open Access and Digital Collections Specialist, on Harvard Library Innovation Lab's Caselaw Access Project.
• Padmashree Gehl Sampath and Paola Ricaurte, with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, on reclaiming the data commons.
• Daniel Scarnecchia, Researcher with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's Signal Program, on open data, surveillance, and humanitarian aid.

Fall 2018

• Yaso Cordova, digital HKS Research Fellow.
• Di Luong, Media Mobilizing Project, on data and algorithmic justice.
• Momin M. Malik, Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow.
• Richard Pope, digital HKS Research Fellow.