5 - 9 January 2026

 

In-person 

Opening Time:
5 January at 9.15am Amsterdam time. Please be punctual!

Opening Day Location:
University of Amsteram
Oudemanhuispoort 4-6 
1012 CN Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Room D1.09

Everyday location:
Digital Methods Initiative
University of Amsterdam
Turfdraagsterpad 9
1012 XT Amsterdam

 

Digital Methods Initiative - Winter School 2026

 

Research-with-AI critique

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Winter School on 'Research-with-AI critique'. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master's students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. 

Just a part of the pipeline: Research-with-AI critique

Chatbots have become a ‘part of the pipeline’ in a number of research methodologies in the social sciences and humanities, contributing to formatting, summaries, annotation, labeling and even the generation of synthetic data. One question is how to go about using chatbots in the first place for such research tasks, and make use of the many best practice guides that have been shared across the research landscape. These guides contain steps about how to prompt and query chatbots properly. But they also advise that the chatbots explain themselves and that researchers validate their outputs. How does one gain confidence in how the chatbots work for the researchers? In other words, at each of these steps, one could consider how to ground chatbot findings, raising a series of questions such as when to undertake a manual and/or multiple chatbot comparison. 
 

Digital methods and AI

Taking such a series of steps is in keeping with a digital methods outlook that would ask, what does this medium have to offer, and how can those offerings be repurposed for social and cultural research? And under which conditions can the findings be grounded in the medium? But it would also ask, what are AI native or medium methods? Can chatbots be used as societal and cultural reflections (such as the promise of 'synthetic data'? How does the medium or the platform affect the data? Here is where guardrail auditing comes into the picture. How to detect the guardrails that have been put up by the chatbots so that they can interact with users without offence? How do they affect the quality of the data?

The Winter School is dedicated to how to undertake research with AI through a critical, digital methods lens.

Information

For all details about this Winter School Course, please visit the Digital Methods website below. 

Instructions, project descriptions and welcome package (as they become available)

 

Course information:

• Dates: 5-9 January 2026
• Tuition fee: € 795
• Registration deadline: rolling admissions until 8 December 2025
• Academic director: Richard Rogers
• Academic level: all graduate levels - Master's, PhD candidates and professionals/scholars
• Credits: 6 ECTS 
• Field of study: New Media and Digital Culture
• Location: In-person. University of Amsterdam, Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT Amsterdam, the Netherlands

School philosophy

The Digital Methods Winter School is exploratory and experimental. It is not a setting for ‘just’ tool training or for principally tool-driven research. Substantive research projects are conceived and carried out. Participants are encouraged to ‘span time with their issue’ and the materials. In other words, we heed Alexander Galloway’s admonition about data and tool-driven work: “Those who were formerly scholars or experts in a certain area are now recast as mere tool users beholden to the affordances of the tool — while students spend ever more time mastering menus and buttons, becoming literate in a digital device rather than a literary corpus.”[1] We encourage device and corpus literacy! The device training we ask you to do prior to the School through online tutorials, and at the School itself, in a kind of flipped learning environment (if you'll excuse the overused phrase), we would like to believe that you have familiarised yourself already with the tools (and are driven, to complete the thought). During the School we will discuss and tinker with the nitty-gritty, aim to invent new methods, techniques and heuristics and create the first iterations of compelling work to be shared.

[1] Alexander Galloway (2014)." The Cybernetic Hypothesis," Differences. 25(1):107-131. See page 127.

About the Winter School

The Digital Methods Winter School, a part of the Digital Methods Initiative, is directed by Professor Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. The Winter School is one training opportunity provided by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI). DMI also has a Summer School, held the first weeks of July. Both Schools have a technical staff as well as a design staff, drawn from the ranks of Density Design in Milan. The Schools also rely on a technical infrastructure of servers hosting tools and storing data. 

In a culture of experimentation and skill-sharing, participants bring their laptops, learn method, undertake research projects, make reports, tools and graphics and write them up on the Digital Methods wiki. The School concludes with final presentations. Often there are subject matter experts from non-governmental or other organizations who present their analytical needs and issues at the outset and the projects seek to meet those needs, however indirectly.

Please see previous Digital Methods Summer Schools, 2007-2025. See also previous Digital Methods Winter Schools, 2009-2025.

The Digital Methods Initiative was founded with a grant from the Piet Mondriaan Foundation, the public cultural funding organization. The Digital Methods Summer and Winter Schools are self-sustaining.

Credits and completion certificate

Completion certificate and transcript for 6 ECTS are granted to participants who follow the School program, and complete a significant contribution to a School project as evidenced by co-authorship of the project report as well as final (joint) presentation slides. Templates for the project report as well as for the presentation slides are supplied. Please note that certificates of completion and the transcripts are the same. There are no other certificates or proof of participation supplied.