We return with another post featuring our Data Diversity conversation with University of Cambridge Data Champion, archaeologist Dr Stefania Merlo from the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, the Remote Sensing Digital Data Coordinator and project manager of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project and coordinator of the Metsemegologolo project. This post is short in word count but not in importance, as it touches on two reflections on the challenges of data management as a researcher who works in a global context, two aspects of present-day academia that may be relevant to many readers. This edition follows on from the previous post where Stefania talks about the challenges of extending UK-based Open Data policies to non-UK communities that may not share the same enthusiasm for making their cultural heritage artefacts available Open Access.
In this post, Stefania reflects on how she conducts herself as a European researcher working in the African continent where her intention may sometimes be misaligned with the local data co-creators. Stefania also shares the challenge of academic mobility, where migrating from one academic institution to another results in data that is left behind, provoking an uncomfortable thought: what would happen to your data when you are suddenly rendered uncontactable?
One would like to think that this is a rare situation, but I suspect that the situation where somebody passes away unexpectedly or even not, or somebody retires and has not made a plan for what happens to an entire careers’ data set happens more often than we know. I think it is an individual’s responsibility to make plans, but I think support should be given by the institutions and people should be accompanied through this path. – Dr Stefania Merlo
Working in the African continent and being honest about the objectives of research
Working in Africa and in African countries, gives somebody coming from a European background, and an Italian background like me, a particular set of challenges and opportunities, because you encounter a different set up with everything – with life, and with research. Living and working in this context in various African countries, allows a researcher coming from a different background to question and challenge themselves on how they do their work. Many things that are taken for granted in other settings cannot be taken for granted in that setting. In particular that relationship with the land, with nature, and with the past. Any archaeologist that works in this setting would tell you that there are certain things that you just know from very early on that you should do. For example, although we’re dealing with the past of archaeological landscapes, you don’t just go and do your work there without acknowledging that these landscapes come in spaces and areas occupied by people today, and that those people are the custodians of the land and of the archaeology today. So there needs to be a deep engagement with communities and with people even before you put your spade in the ground. And it takes time to build relationships of trust, and relationships that then allow you to do work on your own or together, depending on what the aim of your research is.
When I do work that fulfills certain academic goals that may not be of interest to the communities that I work with, I think it is better to be honest and tell them that I’m doing this piece of work because there is an archaeological question that probably only archaeologists are interested in, and this is the part of work that I’m doing. At the same time, I think it is also important then to acknowledge that you work in a setting that includes other people, and start thinking about what work you can do with the people that are custodians of or inhabit a particular part of the world. Then you start thinking, OK, there’s a different set of activities that I can do with people that people want to do with me and let’s do that. I think that it is important to have this honesty of saying that particular things are of interest to me and to my academic community that I would like to do, and then we can negotiate together. You have to engage with the community, and I think we should be a bit more honest and a bit more specific about what the expectations from both parties are, and from the setting, we’re coming and the setting we’re going to.
There are certain academic activities that I’m expected to do that are of no interest whatsoever for the communities that I’m working with, such as the academic publications on which my career rests. Then, there are other things that the communities are interested in that will give me no weight whatsoever in my academic career but contribute to building a relationship with the local community. These give me so much fulfillment because I realise that I am doing research work that is useful not only for my academic community, but for other people, be it students, colleagues elsewhere in the world, or the building of policies around archaeological heritage.
Global researcher, global data
LO: As someone who has engaged in research all over the globe, how do you deal with data that is in various places around the world?
SM: How do I deal with my data? – poorly. I may be a digital data champion, but it has been a difficult road, and it is still a difficult road, that of even managing and curating my own data. Just to give you an example, a lot of the data I’ve collected for the past 20 years is both in analog and digital format for the same project. I have some data with me here (in Cambridge) and I still have data backed up in hard drives that I haven’t opened in a long time. The majority of my analogue data sets, maps, drawings, diaries, I have left behind in South Africa when I moved here, and I haven’t been able to bring them with me. Some of my materials are in Italy with my family. Some of my diaries I had left back in Cambridge when I left to go to Botswana in 2006 and somehow got lost. So, it has been messy and I’m not proud of it. But I’m saying it because it is a problem with a lot of researchers that have become highly mobile and have migrated from one place to another, in some cases without sufficient funding to bring all of the paperwork with them. I have been a messy data collector, since my undergraduate and PhD days, and I’ve been trying to train myself to be better, I’m still not there yet, and in part it’s just me. But I think it has also to do with this very high mobility and having to change institutions in my career so many times. And what changed is not only the location, but the requirement of what you do with data where you put it, how you avail it to yourself and to others.
And so yes, I’m not very good at it but I’m trying very hard to find a way of now putting everything together because I do feel the responsibility that comes with collecting data in different countries. Some of it is actually information that was given to me from community members or friends, or colleagues that I work with and it’s with me.
It’s their work, it’s with me and if anything ever happens to me – if I were to change institutions, or if anything were to happen to me, including losing my memory – let me put it like that – what’s going to happen? I’ve never really thought of what would happen if I were to move or to shift? I left my previous institution quite abruptly and during COVID, and I was able to take some materials out, but some other materials I didn’t get access to and they are still all over the place.
And then I started thinking: I have never made a plan for this kind of situation to happen. So what am I going to do now in order to make sure that these data are usable and useful for me, but perhaps also to others when I’m not present as the curator that will be able to tell you what each data asset is. I’m not even talking about the creation of metadata. Most of my photographs, digital photographs, for example, have got metadata that have been ordered. But archaeological datasets are complex, fragmented and can be dispersed so the main challenge is how would you connect the photographs with the drawings within my diary? Of course, there are dates, but it’s going take so much time for somebody else to put all of it together, especially because half of it is in digital format and half of this is in analog format. That is going be a nightmare and may not even be doable. And so, I’ve become acutely aware of the fact that we never think of this situation. We rarely think about handing over data to others in a particular form that will allow others accessibility and ability to still reuse this complex interrelated data if they were to do so.
Worst case (data) scenario
I have another example. One of my collaborators and mentors in South Africa passed away quite suddenly a couple of years ago. They had never made a plan for what would happen to their materials. They published prolifically, so we know a lot of the research that was done over 50 years, but I am aware that they had so much more material, both physical material and files in computers. Their physical collection was transferred from their house to the University by another colleague but, to the best of my knowledge, to date, no one has been able to get access to the digital data, stored in a password protected computer. One would like to think that this is a rare situation, but I suspect that the situation where somebody passes away unexpectedly or even not, or somebody retires and has not made a plan for what happens to an entire career’s data set happens more often than we know. I think it is an individual’s responsibility to make plans, but I think support should be given by the institutions and people should be accompanied through this path. In particular, perhaps academics from other generations that may not be so knowledgeable about how to deal with data management. In particular of digital data, but also of analog data.
Once upon a time, archaeologists used to just put everything into a library or an archive so at least we have the analog records. But again, putting them together and having them make sense is extremely difficult if we don’t think of a framework for doing so. Another issue that I’ve mentioned before is mobility. You know, how do we assist researchers that have got high mobility to deal with this every time they move? I don’t have an exact formula, but when I changed institutions before, both the institution that I was leaving and the ones that were accepting me, I was never asked ‘do you need any financial or other kind of help to transfer your data?’ I was asked to fill in forms for transferring my goods, I was given money for my visa, but nobody ever asked about my academic research and the related data.
We once again thank Stefania for taking the time to speak to us and giving us food for thought. Stefania raises, we believe, a very important question – are we taking for granted that we will always be at hand to ensure that the data that we produce will be understood? Researchers tend to wait until a project is completed before supplying their data with the information needed to make them understood and reusable. If there’s one thing that Stefania brings to mind, is that data FAIR-ness needs to be implemented from the onset of a project and then at every juncture of the project’s lifecycle, as the research unfolds. That way, the research data will be reusable in a self-contained manner.