Niels Stensen Fellowship Conference 2021 - The Use of Data in Society

The 2021 Niels Stensen Conference was a hybrid conference in which plenary sessions of 50 physically present participants were broadcast live to a group of online participants. The topic was the use and misuse of data.

After the welcome speech, the keynote speaker, EU Parliamentarian Paul Tang, presented concerns around the use of data at the European level. He elaborated on the measures governments should be taking and stated that a complex problem like this requires close collaboration with the scientific community. The plenary session was followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Han van Krieken, Chair of the Niels Stensen Committee, Dr. Paul Tang,  Dr. ir. Alain Starke, NSF alumnus and Dr. Catalina Goanta, NSF alumna.

Participants attended four workshops, also conducted in hybrid form:

• Workshop 1: 'Conspiracy Thinking' by Prof. Dr. Stef Aupers
• Workshop 2: 'Digital Targeting and Polarisation in Social Media' by Dr. Sanne Kruikemeier
• Workshop 3: Fairness and the Right to Non-discrimination by Prof. dr. Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius
• Workshop 4: 'Democratic Control Of Algorithms' by Drs. Kees Verhoeven

The theme challenged the attendees enormously. The harmful effects of fake news and filter bubbles in social media were discussed, as well as the increase in polarization and conspiracy thinking.

We ended the day with music, drinks, a vegetarian BBQ, entirely in style with our global footprint objective, and a dinner speech “A Conversation About Data Usage In The Future” by Pim Korsten, Researcher & Strategist at FreedomLab.