The Big Data Studies Lab (BDSL) at the University of Hong Kong conducts experimental research that rethinks the role of the humanities in the Zettabyte era. How do we handle sources distributed across millions of servers? Or digital artifacts that increasingly take the form of audiovisual content, 3D point clouds, and holograms? Our search for the new normal in the humanities is supported by the Dean’s Development Fund, Seed Fund for Basic Research for New Staff, and Seed Fund for Collaborative Research in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. From 2019 to 2022, BDSL received the generous support of Seoul National University via the prestigious Innovative and Pioneering Researchers Scheme.

BDSL aspires to develop a global and balanced understanding of big data from a humanities perspective. Our international research team consults sources in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Danish, Norwegian, and other languages.

BDSL is committed to maintaining a high standard of research, with an emphasis on technological literacy and methodological rigor. Our objective is not hasty theorization but rather to empirically demonstrate our arguments through experiments and field research. We thoroughly verify all facts, reports, whitepapers, and data sets cited in our published papers and blog posts, and we promptly correct any errors or misleading information we discover.