Abstract
Big data has emerged as a source for identifying large scale trends, understanding when interventions have worked or predicting their outcomes. In this seminar, we will discuss how big data sources can be used to advance and monitor Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (i) from the perspective of communities that generate and use big data; (ii) consisting of digital traces that people leave online as a proxy for social norms, attitudes and offline behaviours; and (iii) the challenges related to (unequal) capacity of teams to derive knowledge from big data sources. We will present some case studies of using big data for gender equality (SDG5) and universal health coverage (SDG3), reflecting on the ethical aspects related to the dignity, privacy and digital and social exclusions.
Speaker
Dr Claudia Abreu Lopes is a Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). She has spent 20 years in academia with positions at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge (POLIS).
Prior to joining UNU, she was an Affiliated Lecturer in Statistics and Methods at POLIS and a Lead Consultant in Big Data and Gender at UN Women. Claudia has also worked on the charity sector with Girl Effect (Data Scientist), and Africa’s Voices Foundation (Head of Research and Innovation), leading projects that used digital data to accelerate and evaluate the impact of public health interventions. She was also involved in evaluations for the World Bank, BBC Media Action and GPSDD.
Her research interests focus on methodologies that use big data as a complement to official statistics to monitor and advance sustainable development goals related to gender equality and health. She has been applied them to projects related to adolescent sexual and reproductive health and violence against women and girls. She is also interested in the structural determinants of health inequalities and their impact on health outcomes.
She holds a PhD in Social Research Methods from the LSE, a Master’s degree in Social Psychology from the University of Porto, a Degree of Advanced Studies in Social Psychology awarded by the University of Geneva and the University of Bari, and a Licentiate degree in Psychology from the University of Coimbra.
