Analyze

I've been organizing and working with the Research Data KE Working Group. We have been collecting relevant links, articles and data in this essay. Some members of our group are now going deeper into thematic areas such as looking at gender and its intersection with COVID-19 in Kenya. We have a monthly call on the second Thursday of every month. We also have a WhatsApp chat group to exchange links and articles. We are open to new members, sign up here. You can find an archive of all of our calls and notes here.

This is very hard to say upfront. I'm not an advocate for saving data for the sake of it.

Understanding and having the option to have some data open and some data restricted ongoing. The button at the bottom of the Annotate tool is helpful in this respect. 

As an academic that has recently left the institutional belonging for a moment to a university, I can answer this from two perspectives.

All of my digital design research projects have very specifc ways of digitally managing data, including building platforms for researchers in tech corporations (climate change or for spaces for protecting endangered species beyond borders). To manage digital data in their platforms.

Working with women-in-tech on their public leadership. The group required data to be shared and sjupport for one another via WhatsApp. This supported their Twitter and public TV experiences live.

Or working with those not engaging in multi-arts venues via building together an app - the process being the most successful outcome. We used the data management processes the funder  required and also the design adn tech partners were using.

During Covid-19 digital data flows in the usual ways, but we're discussion new CRMs for fundraising right now. We share data in the usual way, but Zoom, WhatsApp and Skype scaffold a lot of our emphasis on face-to-face community engagement. We don't share data outside of the homeless charity on interaction numbers on the street etc, because like many charities it need not report data to the government. The charity does not share homeless data with governmental departements that share their data in ways we would not advocate for, unless it is required by law,— like auditing and tax. 

Digital design research is what I do, — but during the crisis it is to enable me to build community trust and give remote and rapid leadership and community decision-making in my role as a Chair of a homeless charity in London, UK.

Bullet Journal (handwritten with dotted pages for designing).

Trello for project management unless on a specific project that requires other software for gantt charts, workplans, etc.

Adobe Suite (Indesign, Illustrator etc.)

Email (usually Outlook)

DTP - Microsoft Word, Excel etc. but also using online free platforms like Google Docs and Sheets.

Text Edit - all the time for cleaning up text and embedded coding.

Headspace - meditation.

WhatsApp - for sharing.

Audible for music.

Photos and video on my phone.

Twitter - social media and outreach.

Signal  - for better encryption.

Pocket casts – podcasts for inspiration and research

NCVO platform and .gov.uk and other websites using Chrome or Signal.

Bookends - bibliography.

Skype / Zoom - remote working during covid-19 mostly.

and more...

https://twitter.com/bateswalsall1/status/1264308701269233665?s=20

The twitter link above shows a video of a foodbank near where I live in London in a shopping centre in Elephant and Castle. This is a foodbank queue for the unemployed and those receiving benefits. This is not a queue for the homeless. It also shows close proximity and in some places the inability to distance and follow national guidance.

"Currently, there are no studies on the survival of the COVID-19 virus in drinking-water or sewage. The morphology and chemical structure of this virus are similar to those of other coronavirusesa for which there are data about both survival in the environment and effective inactivation measures. This guidance draws on the existing evidence base and current WHO guidance on how to protect against viruses in sewage and drinking-water."

and 

"The COVID-19 virus is enveloped and thus less stable in the environment compared to non-enveloped human enteric viruses with known waterborne transmission (such as adenoviruses, norovirus, rotavirus and hepatitis A). "

Link: Water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management for the COVID-19 virus, Interim guidance, 23 April 2020 by WHO and UNICEF: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/water-sanitation-hygiene-and-wa…

These excerpts from WHO regs, relate to Aalok Khandekar’s draft commentary, “Heat and Contagion in the Off-Grid City”  in relation to mentioning hepatitis.

And, also to a comment in previous weeks around air transmission and sewage across the border in north and south America made by Kim Fortun 

The training of and role for the (humanist?) intellectual in the world seems to be a relevant take-away point of discussion from postcolonial theory. I have been noticing a proliferation of thought pieces and various genres of writing by engaged scholars in this COVID-19 moment. While indeed there is lots to think and write about, the Late Industrial times we are in are also marked by a heavy saturation of information. Rather than feeling enlightening and motivated by the increased proliferation of opinions on COVID-19, I find it has the opposite effect. What other (new) forms of knowledge, processes for knowledge making, and ways of engaging in the world (not to mention education for critical consciousness) are needed in this moment? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I find the value and strength of new research collectives like this one to be rich spaces from which to start thinking about this question.

Ahmed describes the importance of a "humanist education" that trains the “ethical reflex” to open one up to forms of consciousness fundamentally different from one’s own. He notes that such openness eventually requires one to “rebel” against one’s training itself (developing critical consciousness?).

Ahmed also writes about the relationship where the intellectual refuses to speak for the subaltern--where the intellectual enters into a relationship with something foreign to him about which he will absolutely refuse ever to produce authoritative knowledge. "The point of the relationship is, in fact, "to question the grounds of knowledge itself."