Follow the Data: Web Archives Data 
A workshop from the Digging into Digital Footprints Data project

We are pleased to announce the second in our series of free, intensive two-day workshops for social researchers on digital footprints data.

In this workshop, we will explore how the archived web is made, and what it makes possible for digital social research. The archived web is one of the largest records of social life we have, spanning decades of pages, platforms and communities that are otherwise long gone. But crawlers, curators and collection policies all shape what gets collected, how often, and what is kept, and those decisions determine what can later be asked of these data. Follow the Data brings together social researchers to critically engage with these questions: where these data come from, how they are shaped, and what they can and cannot tell us about the social world, now and in the past.

The workshop combines capacity building with methodological and ethical debate, working with social researchers who are interested in using web archives in their research. No prior experience with web archives is needed. We welcome participants from across career stages and disciplinary backgrounds.

15-16 September 2026, Bristol Digital Futures Institute, Bristol

Free to attend. Limited travel bursaries are available for early career researchers.

Fill out a short Expression of Interest form to register your interest in attending here (Deadline for applications is 26th August): https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/MTpk2tNnV4

The Follow the Data workshops are part of the ESRC Smart Data Research UK Accelerator project: Digging into Digital Footprints Data. Funding from the ESRC is gratefully acknowledged, grant number ES/Y010892/1.