REMASS Data (In)Justice Workshop

The workshop on data (in)justice was organized by the REMASS CEU team, Lilian, Sarah and Anke and took place on the 6th of November 2025 at the Central European University.

Besides the three invited international speakers -Brototi Roy (Autonomous University of Barcelona/CEU), Arnim Scheidel (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Sowmya Marriyapillai Ravisandiran (Universiteit Leiden) - sharing their research findings, insights and challenges when conducting fieldwork in India and Cambodia, further presenters explored different struggles when interviewing either persons with disabilities or corporate elite. The following short discussions focused on questions such as the importance of data justice and non-extractivist research practice.  

In the fishbowl discussion participants addressed following questions:

• How can we bring more data justice into our research?

• What are the barriers and potential entry points with this regard?

These topics stimulated a vivid, vulnerable and trusting round in which the perceived inherent messiness and contradictions within the academia and research practice (‘big data’ vs ‘small stories’, ‘cherry-picking’ data and more) were shared with each other.  

On the last day we explored the implications of data justice for the REMASS project.
The suggested and repeated aim was to reconcile the ‘big’ quantitative data with the ‘small’ qualitative stories to inform, correct, contextualize each other, as both require the other for a more holistic understanding.

Furthermore, as scholars aware of the inherent injustices within the academic system the participants voiced how crucial it is to question one’s own responsibility, positionality and the process as well as outcomes of data collection and analysis.