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Ethical Commitments

Our mission to combat bias carries significant responsibility for research integrity and ethics. We embrace this responsibility through a set of ethical commitments that ensure accountability in our work.

Born from the GLOBALISE project, Combatting Bias emerged in response to challenges and experiences encountered in building datasets and digital infrastructures. Our ethical commitments supplement and extend GLOBALISE’s Ethics Policy by specifically addressing institutional and systemic injustices, and the two should be read in conjunction.

  1. We acknowledge that archival materials have (historically) not been described in a way that enables access to the stories of the minoritised. We are committed to centering the humanity of minoritised groups in all aspects of our work.

  2. We acknowledge that archives often describe minoritised groups with harmful and offensive language, and can bear narratives of violence and oppression inflicted on these groups. We are committed to thinking about ways people can access these archives in safer ways.

  3. We acknowledge that knowledge production is inherently influenced by power structures, with academic standards historically shaped by Global North institutions that have (in)directly benefited from the appropriation of indigenous knowledge and resources. Our core project team is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in the Global North, and we therefore acknowledge that this brings inherent biases to our work. Our commitment is twofold: to actively amplify diverse perspectives in our work and to maintain transparency in our decision-making processes. We believe research must be grounded in and accountable to the communities it affects, particularly centering the voices and experiences of those most impacted. Through our global network of partners and advisors, we maintain deep connections both within our Dutch communities and internationally, enabling us to integrate a rich diversity of perspectives and lived experiences into our work.

  4. We acknowledge that working with data risks having a reductionist impact on peoples’ experiences and identities. We are committed to creating human-centred descriptions and providing caring context.

  5. We acknowledge that decolonisation and reparation are unfinished endeavours, and will not be completed during this project. We are committed to working with experts and activists and remaining open-minded during and after the completion of this project to adjust to shifting narratives and needs of minoritised communities.

  6. Our research recognizes that while computational tools and AI offer valuable capabilities for analysing historical data within SSH, they can amplify existing inequities. Digital technologies often create a cycle of “coded bias”1 where minoritised communities face compounded discrimination through biased training data, opaque systems, labor exploitation, environmental harm, and concentrated corporate power. We address this through developing responsible data curation standards and engaging in AI policy advocacy. While we see AI’s potential benefits, we maintain a critical stance - supporting beneficial applications while opposing harmful ones, recognizing that AI should serve community needs rather than be treated as inevitable.

  7. We believe in democratising access to knowledge. Our commitment to accessibility means publishing all our work through open access channels and ensuring our research outputs are freely available.

With these ethical commitments, we join a culture of previous projects committed to producing ethical and just research. We drew inspirations from these projects before us, such as, but not limited to, HIA Collection, On The Grounds, and the Rozsa Foundation. We are committed to continuously update our knowledge (and therefore, our ethical commitments) on the issues of decoloniality, fair inclusion and representation, and responsible AI use.

Explanation of Terms

  • With minoritised peoples we refer to individuals or groups negatively affected by inequalities created through colonialism, exploitation, and/or discrimination. Following D’Ignazio and Klein (2020)2, we prefer this term to ‘marginalised’ or ‘minorities’. ‘Marginalised’ implies a misleading binary between ‘core’ and ‘margin’, when these spaces are actually fluid and intersectional. ‘Minorities’ defines people primarily by their oppression. In contrast, ‘minoritisation’ emphasizes the process and experience of oppression, acknowledging the humanity of those facing unjust circumstances.

  • The term Global North, though potentially dated, refers to regions where power and wealth have historically been—and continue to be—concentrated. In our project’s context, these are primarily regions that engaged in imperialist conquests and violent exploitation, such as Western Europe and North America. While we acknowledge the problematic dichotomy with ‘Global South’ and recognize that neither region is monolithic, we use ‘Global North’ as a practical shorthand. It helps us identify areas that gained disproportionate power and wealth through the historically unjust distribution of resources (via exploitation and extraction), in contrast to regions that suffered this violence.4

  1. Ressa, Maria. 2025. “Outlook: AI and Media.” Presented at the International Association for Safe & Ethical AI, Paris, February 6. https://www.iaseai.org/conference/program/outlook-ai-and-media. ↩

  2. D’ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. 2020. Data Feminism. MIT press. ↩

  3. David Leslie, Michael Katell, Mhairi Aitken, Jatinder Singh, Morgan Briggs, Rosamund Powell, Cami Rincon, et al. “Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice: An Integrated Literature Review.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, March 22, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4073376, p. 10. ↩

  4. Lara Braff and Katie Nelson, “Chapter 15: The Global North: Introducing the Region.” Gendered Lives. Milne Publishing, 2022, online version: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/genderedlives/chapter/chapter-15-the-global-north-introducing-the-region/; Themrise Khan, Seye Abimbola, Catherine Kyobutungi, and Madhukar Pai. “How we classify countries and people - and why it matters.” BMJ Glob Health 7 (6), Jun 2022. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2022-009704; Stewart Patrick and Alexandra Huggins. “The Term “Global South” Is Surging. It Should Be Retired.” Carnegie Endowment, 2023. https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2023/08/the-term-global-south-is-surging-it-should-be-retired?lang=en (accessed 11 February 2025). ↩