Sharing Techniques and Experience in a Collaborative e-Social Science Pilot Project

This paper draws on insights from a collective ethnographic approach in the development of a multidisciplinary and collaborative e-social science project. Our pilot demonstrator explored the multidimensionality of social exclusion with regard to young people, neighborhood and crime, and in so doing developed user-led and data-driven Grid technologies. This collective ethnographic approach fostered reflexive development, which we define as ‘situated innovation’. An interpretive approach allowed us to identify barriers to collaborative e-social science, enabling social science to shape the Grid. Enablers include trusted data and research networks, varied skill-sets and the team’s capacity to innovate. The paper outlines a complex and ‘messy’ (and perhaps ongoing) research story, which reflects the way academic debates were advanced, outputs were generated for policy-making and non-expert tools were produced to access the Grid.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard