SMART Data Sprint I Lisbon, 2016-2023
SMART is short for Social Media Research Techniques, a research group within NOVA University Lisbon’s iNOVA Media Lab, responsible for organising SMART Data Sprint, the first digital methods school in Portugal. I founded and coordinated both the group and the school as part of a broader effort to create a space for collaborative, practice-based, and interdisciplinary engagement with digital methods.
From 2016 to 2023, SMART Data Sprint brought together researchers, designers, and collaborators to explore how web data, platforms, interfaces, and digital objects can be repurposed for social research. The initiative was designed not only as a training environment but also as a site for experimentation, where methods were developed through hands-on work, collective inquiry, and project-based collaboration.
SMART Data Sprint also seeded an international network of collaborators who, after joining the initiative, went on to develop related activities, projects, and new courses around digital methods.
SMART Data Sprint contributed to the field by helping establish digital methods as a recognisable area of teaching and research in Portugal, while also fostering international exchange and methodological innovation. More than a school, it became a platform for learning by doing, for testing research procedures, and for advancing digital methods as a reproducible and critically engaged practice.
Over the years, SMART Data Sprint has also helped build an international network of collaborators, researchers, and practitioners around digital methods.
Check all Digital Methods reports here: https://metodosdigitais.fcsh.unl.pt/?page_id=2614
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