The second Digging into Data Challenge competition announced the winners who promoted innovative humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis. Fourteen teams representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States were the recipients of grants to investigate how computational techniques can be applied to “big data” to change the nature of humanities and social sciences research.

MarketWatch brought this news to our attention in their article, “Eight International Research Funders Announce the Winners of the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge.” The projects cover a wide variety of topics that include using information retrieval techniques to investigate changes in Western music to using data-mining technology to shed light on the impacts of economic opportunity and spatial mobility on social structure.

Melody K. Smith

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