Bridging STEM and Humanities/Social Sciences Disciplines
The MCAA has initiated a series of webinars that run each second Friday of the month starting from December 2021. The aim is to provide educational webinars to the MCAA members and non-members as a way to thank them for the support received all these years. The webinars are co-organised by the Communication WG in collaboration with a different MCAA Chapter or Working Group each month and cover a variety of topics.
In the eighth episode, organized by the Communication WG in collaboration with the Turkey Chapter, the focus was set on a very important topic: Bridging STEM and Humanities/Social Science Disciplines.
Here we will summarize the highlights of the 8th Episode of the MCAA Around the World Webinar Series (Watch the full webinar here — YouTube).
This webinar focused on how researchers can conduct transdisciplinary work that can draw upon both STEM and humanities/social sciences fields. It did not merely provide strategic information on how to bridge STEM and humanities/social sciences; it also discussed personal anxieties and institutional challenges that researchers who pursue transdisciplinary research face. While Ali Hürriyetoğlu and N. Gizem Bacaksızlar Turbic discussed their work on computational social sciences, Uğurgül Tunç and Lucienne Thys-Şenocak spoke about their work in medical and health humanities.
Ali Hürriyetoğlu first discussed his education and research experience. He received his PhD from Radboud University, the Netherlands. His postgraduate research examined how one can generate humanitarian action through an analysis of social media data. He later worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the European Research Council (ERC) on the Emerging Welfare project (https://emw.ku.edu.tr/), which examines how welfare money is spent in different parts of the world. His current project, Odeuropa (https://odeuropa.eu/), takes a new leap forward — it analyses texts in seven languages and looks at olfactory information between 1620 and 1920. He then discussed the discrepancies between the perspectives of social scientists and computer scientists. He noted that computer science can be a “straightforward world” that tends to minimize differences among different variables. In contrast, social sciences emphasize that each human is different and each community has different characteristics. Therefore, it is harder to posit exact measurements in social sciences. Social scientists used to do manual work, so they are happy when computer scientists help them conduct their research faster. They thus show great enthusiasm as they collaborate with computer scientists. In contrast, computer scientists may be intimidated by social scientists who can use a sophisticated, theoretical language in their work. At the same time, Hürriyetoğlu emphasized that computer scientists should still collaborate with social scientists and not assume that their research methods will solve everything. As he put it:
“I learned where to stop and where to listen a bit more.”
The other side of the story on computational social sciences was presented N. Gizem Bacaksizlar Turbic. At the beginning of her talk, Turbic discussed her academic background. She received her PhD in Computing and Informatics from the UNC Charlotte, USA in 2019. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, Portugal, and she is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Team Digital Society Observatory at GESIS, Germany. Some of her earlier projects worked on systems language of ecology and feedback dynamics. Her current project at GESIS (SOCIALCOMQUANT; socialcomquant.ku.edu.tr) aims to excel in computational social sciences in Turkey through organizing workshops, generating teaching materials and curriculum, and providing exchange opportunities. For this project, GESIS collaborates with Koç University, Turkey, and the ISI Foundation, Italy. Open access materials about computational social sciences are available on the project’s website. Later, Turbic discussed her research in applied computational social science. In particular, her research examines reactions on social media to social and political events. It collects data from social media platforms and examines socio-political networks. She wanted to understand the most influential actor in a particular network, since some social media users have the power to steer a particular conversation in a specific direction. Turbic used different social media platforms for data collection and relied on deep learning and machine learning methods. Some of the events her research examined include the Charlotte protests and the 2016 USA elections. By drawing on social theory, her research argues that “inequality of influence increases after clear outgroup threats” since groups under threat tend to follow thought leaders. Therefore, few social media users become more influential during times of crisis. She noted that future research could examine the impact of automated algorithms and trolls on social media. For more information on this research, she recommended talks from the GESIS Meet the Experts video series on YouTube.
Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, professor of art history and archaeology at Koç University, and Uğurgül Tunç, PhD candidate in art history and archaeology at the same university, discussed another field which, like computational social sciences, combined methods from STEM and social sciences/humanities: medical and health humanities. Many humanities researchers do not realize that they do research in medical and health humanities. Different disciplines, such as architectural history and musicology, can contribute to medical and health humanities. Later, both Thys-Şenocak and Tunç discussed the Koç University Medical and Health Humanities Initiative, which was inaugurated in 2019. This initiative started before the pandemic; it became even more relevant during the pandemic. It aims to bring scholars from different disciplines and share their work on medical and health humanities research. The initiative is open to everyone. Thys-Şenocak and Tunç also provided a brief history of the medical and health humanities field, which consists of two waves. The first wave focused on humanizing doctors and nurses and helped them resolve problems in medical practice such as burnout. The second wave critiques the earlier scholarship for not being inclusive enough and for sometimes dismissing humanities as not rigorous enough. Furthermore, they discussed established journals such as LANCET and JAMA that accept articles on medical and health humanities and recommended some key works such as Teaching Health Humanities (2019) and Health Humanities Reader (2014). Furthermore, Tunç also talked about her research on birth spaces. In particular, her research examines the ways in which interior hospital architecture shapes one’s birth experience. This research also has practical implications, as its findings are already being put to use in hospitals.
The Q & A
During the Q and A session, speakers discussed the challenges researchers with transdisciplinary interests would face and the ways to overcome these challenges. Both Tunç and Turbic emphasized that speakers should take courses in which they have never studied. Hürriyetoğlu pointed out structural funding issues: Institutions should not merely claim that they support transdisciplinary research, but also they should provide funding for such research. Turbic talked about the anxiety that researchers face as they conduct interdisciplinary projects. She noted that researchers need to understand that all skills are valuable. One can always acquire new skills through new, free courses. Thys-Şenocak also pointed out that one needs to be aware that disciplines have different kinds of discourses. For example, while the term “critical” can have positive connotations for humanities scholars who use it to signal their innovative approach to a problem, the same term can have negative connotations for medical researchers. Furthermore, elective courses can be helpful for researchers who want to venture into different disciplines. Thys-Şenocak thus discussed the difficulties that a structured curriculum generates. Many students who double major in STEM and humanities/social science fields became interested in courses outside their initial specialization, thanks to their elective courses. Therefore, universities and research institutions should not only encourage transdisciplinary research; they should generate structural change.
Author
C. Ceyhun Arslan is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Koç University. His main research interests are Arabic and Turkish literatures, Mediterranean studies, and critical theory. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in various journals, such as Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, and Journal of Mediterranean Studies. He completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie project entitled “OttMed: Reassessing Late Ottoman Literatures within a Mediterranean Framework.”
