Student Opportunity: Data in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

April 16, 2019

JOBID 3690

Ethics and Governance of Data in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Eligibility Requirements: sfs.yorku.ca/employment/workstudy

Applications are only accepted through the YorkU careers site
Apply here: careers.yorku.ca/online-system/
Applications due April 29th

Questions to dighr@yorku.ca
Duration: May – August (16 weeks)
Rate: $15/hour
Approx. 30 hours per week

Nature of the Research Project:
Critical knowledge gaps affect all areas of health in humanitarian crises, limiting the effectiveness of aid efforts in a moment of unprecedented global crisis. Multiple institutions and actors seek to collect, aggregate, analyse and share human health and related data (raw and meta-data) in complex humanitarian emergencies (CHE). This often occurs in legal jurisdictions, and in contexts where different domains of national and international law may or may not apply. What potential risks emerge through poor data privacy and protection practices? What current systems of data protection and normative practices exist for such uses? How can the privacy and privacy and security of people in CHE settings be protected or maximized? What regulatory structures exist or can be created?

The DIGHR works to bring the academic and humanitarian domains together to catalyze research on pressing health-related challenges in humanitarian response. In this RAY project, a student will support the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research (DIGHR) in conducting a scoping study on the ethics and governance of data in complex humanitarian emergencies. The scoping study will map out operationally relevant considerations in the gathering and use of data, including knowledge gaps and research priorities in the humanitarian domain. These outputs will be valuable in supporting the DIGHR in scoping the ethical and governance considerations of the data flood in complex humanitarian emergencies, while leveraging the world-leading expertise at York University in multiple domains (health, engineering, environmental studies and information sciences, among others).

Specific research activities the student(s) be engaged in:

Create a structured and annotated bibliographic review of existing literature;
Create a digital research archive of PDFs of identified papers;
Create a series of draft PowerPoint presentations that capture the core conceptual content.