Building global connections for national research infrastructure

Queensland University of Technology partner lead, Professor Daniel Angus, is currently undertaking a visiting fellowship at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany. GESIS is widely recognised as an international leader in the design and governance of social research infrastructure, and this engagement offers an important opportunity to strengthen connections between Australian and European approaches to digital and computational social science.

KODAQS team with Prof Dan Angus

During his time at GESIS, Professor Angus has contributed to a workshop on data quality hosted by the KODAQS team, working alongside colleagues from the Toronto Metropolitan University Social Media Lab. These discussions centred on the methodological and governance challenges of ensuring data quality in social media research—a persistent issue for projects reliant on platform APIs, data donation, and citizen science approaches.

On 10 September 2025, Professor Angus will deliver an institute-wide presentation:

“Tracking Online Advertising Through Citizen-Engaged, Privacy-Preserving Methods.”

The talk will highlight research infrastructure developed through the Australian Internet Observatory to support the Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) through the Australian Ad Observatory project. This work explores how citizen-engaged, privacy-preserving methods can make the dynamics of online advertising more observable and accountable, while embedding ethical and legal safeguards consistent with with Australian standards such as the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2025) and frameworks for responsible data governance.

This fellowship signals a valuable exchange of expertise on building trusted, ethical, and methodologically robust infrastructures for studying online platforms—an area of growing international significance for both academic research and public-interest accountability.