Social Sciences

Makeright Interviews

Criminology, Social Sciences | criminal justice, education, England, interviews, twenty-first century

In 2017 Erika Renedo completed interviews with Makeright inmates (who agreed to participate) linked to semi-structured interview research questions agreed with Lorraine Gamman, who also created and developed ethics protocols and consent forms which were approved by UAL’s ethic committee. These interviews were transcribed at the end of 2017 and sent to the MoJ for permission to publish. In Spring 2018 we gained permission via Keith Jarvis at HMP Thameside to publish and have loaded interviews online via the Makeright website as a data set and form of evaluation (https://makerightorg.wordpress.com/interviews/). We have also loaded films by Stretch who were commissioned by DACRC as a further form of evaluation (https://makerightorg.wordpress.com/images-and-videos/).

Data type: text

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Whittingehame College Old Boy Interviews

Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Social Sciences | England, ethnic minorities, interviews, Judaism, Middle East, migration, twentieth century

Whittingehame College was a Jewish boys’ school located in Brighton and Hove between 1931 and 1958 and in Handcross Park from 1958 until 1967. Whittingehame’s founder was the British Zionist, Jakob Halévy (1898 – 1978). During the years of its existence, the school underwent significant transformations. From educating British Jewry in the early 1930s, Whittingehame attracted Jewish students from Germany and central Europe in the mid-1930s. After the war, Jewish students from Muslim-majorities countries in West Asia and North Africa (especially Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan) increasingly sought admission to the school. This data comprises twelve videos of interviews conducted by Magnus Marsden and Paul Anderson with former students at the College. The interviews were conducted and recorded in Brighton on 10th September 2023, in the context of a College reunion.

Data type: video

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Afterlives of Muslim Asia: 2022-2023

Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Social Sciences | ethnic minorities, ethnography, interviews, Islam, Judaism, Middle East, migration, Sikhism

The data collated is largely gathered through individuals with members of diaspora Afghans from a variety of religious backgrounds, including those identifying as Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Jewish. The study focuses on diaspora settings in which these communities are especially established, notably London and New York. Individuals were selected to be interviewed on the basis of their playing an active role in the life of the communities and also on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the researcher. The data also includes a discussion of the ethnographic work undertaken by the researcher in the form of a series of reports. Included also are notes in a book on Afghanistan’s Hindu community (translated from Persian).

Data type: text

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Afterlives of Urban Muslim Asia: Muslim Perspectives on Non-Muslim Minorities in Aleppo, and Life Histories of Aleppine Armenians in Kuwait, 2022-2024

Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Social Sciences | Christianity, ethnic minorities, ethnography, interviews, Islam, Middle East, questionnaires, twenty-first century, war and conflict, working class

Questionnaires in Arabic were distributed electronically to Muslim residents and former residents of popular / working-class (sha‘bi) quarters of Aleppo through an Arab Muslim former resident of the Hilluk district of Aleppo who had migrated to Gaziantep during the Syrian civil war (2012-). Life history interviews were also conducted with prominent Aleppine Armenian members of the Armenian community in Kuwait: the priest of the Armenian church in Aleppo, and two leading Syrian Armenian merchants who run successful businesses in Kuwait and play a prominent role in the Armenian community there.

Data type: text

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Predicting Online Radicalisation

Social Psychology, Social Sciences | Daesh, ethnic minorities, extremism, Islam, social media, Twitter

IS tweets and baseline tweets.

Data type: text

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Caloric Suitability Index dataset

Agriculture, Social Sciences | agriculture, caloric yield, crop suitability, geography

“The Caloric Suitability Indices” (CSI) capture the variation in potential crop yield across the globe, as measured in calories per hectare per year. Moreover, in light of the expansion in the set of crops that are available for cultivation in the course of the Columbian Exchange, the CSI indices provide a distinct measure for caloric suitability for the pre-1500 and the post-1500 era.

The CSI indices provide four estimates of caloric suitability for each cell of size 5′× 5 in the world:

The maximum potential caloric yield attainable given the set of crops that are suitable for cultivation in the pre-1500 period.
The maximum potential caloric yield attainable, given the set of crops that are suitable for cultivation in the post-1500 period.
The average potential yields within each cell, attainable given the set of crops that are suitable for cultivation in the pre-1500 period.
The average potential yields within each cell, attainable given the set of crops that are suitable for cultivation in the post-1500 period.
The Caloric Suitability Indices (Galor and Özak, 2016) captures the potential agricultural output (measured in calories) based on crops that were available for cultivation in the Pre-1500CE and Post-1500CE eras. It is available for 5’ by 5’ grid cells and at the country level. The data can be used to assess or account for the exogenous effect of agricultural potential on various economic and social outcomes. The data can be used to assess or account for the exogenous effect of agricultural potential on various economic and social outcomes. An IPython notebook is included to show how it can be used and also compares it with another measure of agricultural suitability. The data is provided as a service to the academic research community (see license for permitted uses).

Data type: spatial

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Human Mobility Index dataset

Social Sciences, Transport | geography, seafaring, transportation

“The Human Mobility Index (HMI)” that estimates the potential minimum travel time across the globe (measured in hours) accounting for human biological constraints, as well as geographical and technological factors that determined travel time before the widespread use of steam power. In particular, the HMI indices provide a distinct measure of human mobility potential in different eras:

Human Mobility Index (HMI): Mobility on land without seafaring technology. Shows mobility potential on land before the widespread use of steam power.
Human Mobility Index with Seafaring: HMI expanded to allow mobility on a select set of seas for which historical data was available. Shows potential mobility on land and seas before the introduction of ocean-faring ships.
Human Mobility Index with Ocean: HMI expanded to allow mobility on all seas based on CLIWOC (interpolated). Shows potential mobility on land and seas after the introduction of ocean-faring ships, but before the widespread use of steamships.
Based on these cost surfaces, researchers can find the minimum travel times between locations or construct more sophisticated statistics based on these. For example, Ashraf, Galor and Özak (2010) construct measures of pre-historic geographical isolation to study the effect of isolation on development. Similarly, Özak (2010), Depetris-Chauvin and Özak (2016, 2020) and Michalopoulus and Özak (2019) construct potential trade and information flow networks among countries, ethnic groups, cities, and artificial geographical units, to study the origins of the division of labor, and the effect of technological change on isolation and development. Likewise, Depetris-Chauvin and Özak (2019) use these measures to construct artificial states based on Voronoi partitions.

This strategy overcomes the potential mismeasurement of distances generated by using geodesic distances (Özak 2010), for a period when travel time was the most important determinant of transportation costs. Additionally, it removes the potential concern that travel time to the frontier reflects a country’s stage of development, mitigating further possible endogeneity concerns. The research validates these measures by (i) analyzing their association with actual historical travel time; (ii) examining their explanatory power for the location of historical trade routes in the Old World; and (iii) analyzing their association with genetic and cultural distances.

Data type: spatial

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Spaces of Hope: Peoples’ Plans

Social Sciences, Urban Studies | community, twentieth century, twenty-first century, United Kingdom

“SPACES OF HOPE: the Hidden History of Community Led Planning in the UK has explored the often-overlooked ways in which local people and organisations have come together to improve their physical and social environments. Since the 1960s a rich but hidden history has emerged of communities campaigning, drawing up their own land-use plans, owning, occupying and developing sites and initiating creative community projects. Bringing together universities, artists and archivists and working in partnership with the Town and Country Planning Association, SPACES OF HOPE: PEOPLES’ PLANS is an AHRC-funded research project that aims to reveal these histories and spark debate about how lessons can be applied to current community place-shaping.”

Data type: images, spatial, temporal, text

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Glossary