The Graduate School of Social Sciences and the Humanities supports and teaches PhD students from the faculties of Social Sciences, Humanities, Philosophy, Development Studies, and research groups in Health, Housing and Transition Studies. Each year, they present awards for the best papers and supervisors. This year, The PhD excellence award issued by EGSH goes to Joris Krijger (ESPhil) and Tamara Thuis (RSM). They won the award in the category Best Societal Impact 2021.
Krijger and Thuis started their platform for "ethical peer review around data science challenges" in 2021. A platform where very different organizations discuss concrete dilemmas they encounter in the implementation of ethical algorithms. The initiative offers organizations a platform where the specific context is the focus. How do you use algorithms ethically in that context? More than twenty large organizations from various sectors have now joined the initiative, from municipalities to insurance companies and from telecom companies to (semi-)government organizations.
According to the jury, they are thus setting a real change in motion: "The initiative that we have awarded concerns a successful initiative to improve the social responsibility and practices of large institutions and companies, in the way they deal with their data and algorithms. Inspired by the Toeslagenaffaire, in which the Dutch Tax Administration harassed recipients of benefits for years based on racist algorithms and tax officials. PhD students, Joris Krijger (ESPhil) and Tamara Thuis (RSM) took an initiative to prevent such abuse to repeat itself in the future."
Click here to see all the EGSH winners.
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To further stimulate and reward PhD research, the Graduate School invites its PhD candidates and recent graduates to submit their work and nominate their colleagues for the "Graduate School Awards for PhD Excellence".
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