Data Camp 2025 in the University of Bristol

Text by:

Monika Karmin, Catherine Upex and Rachel Wood

The visiting researchers from University of Udayana (UNUD), Davao Medical School Foundation Incorporation (DMSFI) and University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) arrived in Bristol in summer 2025. They came to an intensive ‘Data Camp’ to first learn quantitative methods, then apply these to OCSEAN linguistic dataset while in Bristol and then take the skills back home to apply in their research projects.

The linguistic dataset was collected by OCSEAN partners in the Philippines and Indonesia mainly during 2023-2024 and the Summer School 2024 in Tartu was the main event to systematize, transcribe, curate and prepare for archiving and also start the analyses of the data.  As the preparatory tasks took longer than originally anticipated, it was decided that a smaller group of Third Country researchers would attend an extensive focused data analysis workshop in Bristol the following year.

In Bristol they were met by the team of Prof Dan Lawson leading the Methods and Analyses work package (WP4) in OCSEAN. The hosting Jean Golding Institute (JGI) is the University of Bristol's central hub for data science and data-intensive research with the multidisciplinary approach.

OCSEAN scholars’ journey into the quantitative methods started with extensive learning, as they had little or no prior coding experience. The instruction was done by dedicated young researchers Catherine Upex and Rachel Wood who share their teaching experiences and insights in the JGI blog.

As a result OCSEAN researchers became more confident in applying Python-based methods to OCSEAN dataset and to their own research projects. The University of Bristol's young educators catered the training for participants with little data science background, having their specific research questions in mind and using relevant data sets, focusing first on the OCSEAN linguistic set. This way, participants could see how data science can help them in their own research and be more inspired to try for themselves.

Under the supervision of Dan Lawson OCSEAN linguistic data was prepared analyses with the lingpy package, python library for historical linguistics. These results were first to be presented July 2025 in the OCSEAN final conference in Bali by Dan Lawson, and in Palawan, the Philippines by Putu Wahyu Widiatmika from Udayana University.

The data camp in Bristol was an invaluable learning and practicing experience for the OCSEAN participants in developing their professional skills and together with the instructors from Bristol this will be taken further back to their research community in Indonesia later in the year. For the larger goals of the OCSEAN project, this workshop and data camp helped to further the analyses of OCSEAN linguistic data with the first historic linguistic overview of the language relations, and necessary steps go on with joint analyses with the genetic data using the CLARITY framework.

Fom left to right: Sena Darmasetiyawan (Udayana University); John Calorio (Davao Medical School Foundation); Komang Sumaryana (Udayana University); Chris Kinipi (University of Papua New Guinea); Wahyu Widiatmika (Udayana University); Dendi Wijaya (Udayana Univiersity CIRHSS)

Training attendees with their course completion certificates, in the middle are training facilitators from the University of Bristol: Dr Dan Lawson (Associate Professor of Data Science and member of OCSEAN project; School of Mathematics), Rachel Wood (PhD student; School of Mathematics); Catherine Upex (PhD student; Bristol Medical School)