 Without further ado, I'm going to introduce our next speaker and now Jerome de Groot is professor of Literature and culture at the university of Manchester and He like many people here is a budding genealytist. So just started his own family tree done his own DNA He's in a very similar situation to a lot of us here But Jerome has actually got a very interesting project that he's running at the University of Manchester And he's exploring the way that the advent of DNA is actually making people Reconsider their identity. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Professor Jerome de Groot Yeah, so I I don't really do much family history or genealogy what I tend to do is Study you as family historians and genealogy. So I'm interested in you as a kind of As a group of people I've been fascinated over the last five or six years. I've been working on you To figure out how you tick And what you do and how and why you do it So yeah, this is a sort of And finally bit of the day really I'm going to introduce you to some fun things that I found out over the last five or six years And particularly what I've been doing over the last year or so with this project Which is called double helix history, which is looking at the ways in which People are using their genetic Makeup of all kinds of ways to understand themselves and particularly how to think about their relationship to their past and how this is transforming So ancestry DNA in 2012 You know, you basically kind of exploded in 2012 there thereafter We've now got a huge kind of numbers of people in these various databases And many of whom like you are very very sophisticated the users of this stuff And many of whom are completely lost with what they're doing And I'm kind of interested in the book the varieties of things that are going on my my interesting family historians is that you've all got very established and Sophisticated ways of thinking about the past and you have been doing this many of you for 40 50 years You've really worked out what you think And then suddenly this new thing comes along this new Tool which seems to suggest all kinds of possibilities But also has all kinds of problems and issues associated with it And I'm just fascinated by seeing that happen live basically in going and talking to people around the world and figure and seeing watching them Figuring out almost daily how they will deal with this and listening to Johnny's talk that kind of idea that suddenly You know, there's all this possibility. We don't know how to read it or use it Well, actually there are people with great tools of great skills who have presented new way So, yeah, I've got this this group this this this project, which I've been doing for a couple years, which I'll explain a little bit about Essentially we've basically been going around the world and talking to family historians because often too often in academia particularly from the point of view of history Family historians are to a certain extent either marginalized or kind of people assume They know what you think or you know what you do and Think which is very clearly not the case In my experience. So what I've done is rather than sort of say, well, this is what I think about this We decided to go around and talk to as many people as we could just to kind of get a handle on it What that means is that what I've got in in this presentation is a lot of kind of Undigested data because everyone is different and everyone has a particular peculiar approach to this stuff so I'm kind of Trying to figure it out right now So, yeah, the opportunity of DNA which is it which is a kind of very clear moment in the kind of last sort of seven eight years this business massive explosion Ancestry's got over to be spoke with ten millions it up to eleven million yet or are they Fifteen million so even bigger so one of the biggest commercial database of DNA in the world 23 in me four million in my heart Okay 24 million top for up from 14 when I wrote this slide three months ago So anyway, this is massive increase in data. There's a daily there. There is increasing this surge of his mention This is astonishing if you think about the amount of stuff that is in the world now about people's DNA We're getting this this increasing kind of ways of sophisticated ways of reading it as we just heard from Johnny the ways in which We're starting to think about this stuff and understand this stuff when I started talking with family historians about of DNA Maybe four or five years ago. They were mildly freaked out Well, I would say more than mildly freaked out by this stuff and people didn't know how to read it They didn't know how to understand it They didn't know how what this stuff might mean a lot of family historians I thought to particularly Manchester where I'm from had resisted taking tests because they assumed that this wasn't something was for them It wasn't very useful for them, etc. Etc. Mainly because they kind of didn't have the tools to deal with this stuff Increasing how I'm finding the people are and you're kind of as a community developing this stuff You're working together. You're collaborating. It's quite amazing to watch You're to the point that you are now the cutting edge of using this information in the world basically much more so than Quite a lot of academic disciplines. My colleagues who are historians don't know how to use any of this stuff but they're historians and But this is also brought up many different problems there were ethical problems that I'm going to talk about today There are problems to do with revealing things about family which may not be something people have necessarily anticipated So, yeah, we're so this is mine. Just see I have done this. This is me My girlfriend says I'm the most boring middle-class white Englishman in the world You know kind of basically work out where everything's from. There we go. That's me So our interest in this is what how does this change people's approaches to their family past does it about people? It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter who cares. This is just another toy. It's just a small tool Okay, so but then there are people for whom this has absolutely changed their life What are the unforeseen consequences of this if they were like 20 of us doing it? That's fine But now we've got 25 million people doing it that has a massive risk value associated with it in all kinds of ways One of the kind of key things that's come out of the massive databases of DNA information family gene Information online has been the rise in This being used by in forensics by law enforcement Which was not something that anyone anticipated four or five years ago when I talked to people about what was worrying them about this They were worried about insurance companies. They weren't worried about law enforcement It's what the unforeseen force consequences and what other kind of anxieties and what are the good things about this that come out And I've been around the world. I've been to Australia South Korea been in Japan the states in Holland and In the UK, I'm going to go to Ireland at next weather to the south of Ireland Excuse me in Months and I'm going to Poland next month as well. So there's quite a sort of strange collection of countries There is a reason for it if you want to find out what I'll tell you But just to kind of get a kind of flavor for this around the world as much as anything And I'm going to tell you a little bit about so the thing I'm interested in this is this kind of Fear or this worry that might be about it if you're interested in in DNA. This is a great novel. It's by Icelandic Crime fiction, right? It's published about two thousand two thousand one Anadol in drifter students called Jar City. It's about DNA Basically, it's about. Oh, sorry. Could I just say some of the stuff that I'm going to be quoting is not is from people If you take photos, can you not share them because these are not these are people's stories and stuff So I would rather they weren't shared online, but you take be feel free to take photos See, it's a great novel about Murderer discovering something about his father using the big DNA databases in Iceland and then going and killing his father It's a great novel about the kind of detective work of DNA But there's also this kind of motion that it's terrifying that there's all this data there which can be used and read into it So I'm kind of really interested in that The opportunity of DNA is kind of good and bad for some people very suspicious I talked to people in Canberra who talked about how suspicious they were of the testing how worried they were Similarly in camera the same city comes with Australia. I'm trained historian I'm thrilled by the new source that DNA provides so that in the same city in the same group I think this was people basically talking about this kind of these different ways that they're worried about it It matches this all time It's like an episode of black mirror, which is a dystopian science fiction TV series is on Netflix Which is how you know horrible ways in which the world is changing and then another person I think even the same route to imagine to tell me this is the golden age for family history I love this idea that it might be the golden age So what I'm going to do today, so I'm just going to go through some of the kind of things that we found And in the end what I'm hoping for Is that you're going to share some experience with me because as I've said I'm kind of a bit, you know I'm not interesting I'm interested in you guys and whether these things chime with what you worry about with what you're thinking about Whether you're kind of comfortable with that some of the stuff that I'm raising whether you don't haven't seen some of this before So if we get when we get to them we'll have a little bit of a chat about that does that sound okay with you lot Good. Okay. So first off why do people do this? Have a range of reasons for doing this I'm kind of presuming that in this room people were doing it for various complicated reasons, but you have a kind of commitment to family history and genealogy a lot of people I spoke with had not and they'd actually got into family history and genealogy through the DNA kit and through that route And so that's saying I think really important interesting for you as a community to think about Because this is a way in and people moan oftentimes I talk to them about You know these people who are just getting it for Christmas and then putting their information up And they're not making a tree and just there's no information associated But this is a way in which you're kind of drawing people in involving people in this and particularly younger people actually the people I spoke with under 30 under 25 doing this stuff where had come in through DNA They definitely were interested because of the DNA that was where they got kind of hooked first So yeah, it was something of a joke. We gave it to my husband. I gave each other for Christmas They kind of you know swapped gifts basically It's because they were interested in the ethnicity issue this person from Sydney Someone came to family history society talks and I've learned more as a consequence and decided to go into it Sorry Manchester saying it. I've been obsessed in finding out who I am And so people are interested in all kinds of different ways the ethnicity whilst I think people and this room might be a little bit I'm comfortable with maybe with the ethnicity Angle the way in which particularly ancestry presents Ethnicity percentages, etc. This is very definitely a driver of people's involvement in this stuff This is very definitely the reason people get involved and all those 15 million people in that database a great majority Are interested coming from that point of view? They may they get become more sophisticated and that's more interesting maybe but it takes them a lot It's the thing that gets you into it Obviously brick walls is the kind of key thing people have bothered about their brick walls and they're really interested in breaking down their brick walls A particular family that I've been looking at for 40 years was able to match with the descendants of this person's children For many of his helpers break through a number of brick walls particularly if your adoptions or illegitimacy now These two things are great, but they do raise ethical concerns They do raise all kinds of problems particularly if you're talking about relatively close family members and nearly everyone we spoke with was mildly terrified about the kind of Consequences of using DNA in this way Brick walls aren't the only reason people are interested in Mystery people are interested in just finding out about themselves people in Holland were interested in just enriching They're behind their insights. I know you can you can take photos, but it's just don't share them Because these are raw just raw raw things that people are spoken So yeah, I mean, I think you can probably you're probably all got your own particular motivations for doing these things And I think it's important for us to have a sense of though There's this broad and this broad a way that people come into it And I think this sometimes you just need to know they kind of this is being presented to us as a Kind of catch all it gives people an answer That's how it's being marketed by some of the big bigger big Organizations, we have to be a bit careful about that because as we all know that's really not what's happening here That kind of knowledge is not necessarily being given and in fact it can make it much more complicated We thought what if I doubt why people did this and particularly why they did it with with with certain companies because I've spent I've spent You know time talking with you guys as a community and it's become clear to me that there are differences between the tests And I've done one I haven't done as many as I wish to maybe but I'm not as much of a user but actually I think people are Very very kind of they range very widely in terms of their motivation and therefore why they do particular tests The biggest database ancestry is obviously the big one and this is why people are so interested in doing it People though are interested in the kind of complexity and stuff like this people are interested in the different kind of functionality etc etc and I It's rare. I don't know about you as a group But there's rare that you come across people who have done more than two maybe Maybe they've done three maybe then before but it's very very rare people tend to do one or maybe two I don't know whether I'm being unfair or you know more than me But basically there's a kind of brand loyalty to a certain extent all people are just exhausting what they're getting from their particular test in their particular But now I just find people who have done nearly everything and I've had you know tests It's just tests 10 years ago and 15 years ago had an amazing amount of information One of the things that we found really was basically about the size of the database and actually ancestry's ancestry's kind of Hold over the market is still so so strong Mainly just because of the size of its of its database the amount of information is going I wouldn't have gone to ancestry initially, but it began to be bigger so I combined that Also people come to Exhibitions and conferences loads of people tell me that they come to something like this Like we are today and it kind of signed up because you know why not because they were there and it was fun So it really really works having this kind of I mean this event really really works And yeah, basically talking with friends The kind of I looked for things talking with volunteers here, and I haven't really explored this enough And I'd like really it'd be nice to know what you think This the kind of community support like this kind of event And then but then also family history societies and online forum and all these kinds of organizational kind of Institutions that are designed to help you do this stuff I think has become the importance and the power of those institutes have become amplified with DNA It was formally, you know, they were important that they would help people kind of Get skills and they will give people kind of networks and collaborative partners or whatever But now they become really a kind of broker. They're really really important educational institutions and kind of Knowledge centers for family history and nearly everyone I spoke with over the last two years has had some involvement with the family history Society which has been a pet which has been a very positive experience. It's given a kind of a set of Skills or a set of relationships, which are really important to them I think this is astonishing the amount of kind of brilliant collaborative work that's going on But also this kind of knowledge base is being built up by you as a community just astonishing One of the things we want to know is what was what how much people's knowledge of DNA actually was important Whether they knew anything Johnny said earlier just talk, you know, he wasn't very good with with the science I don't know anything about DNA. I literally have friends that I phoned up who are geneticists and say can you remind me? Tell me about that again But I was interested whether this was being done taking my people who had Some kind of knowledge of genetics or whether it was done cold and I would say about 95% of people. It's pretty cold They pretty much know that DNA is the building blocks of life and they've heard of Crick and Watson and that's probably it but what actually Whether that matters or not is different that so we have people saying it's like a computer You don't have to understand how the program works for it to be useful. I go like that Various people saying I love this one. I think it's like magic From a little bit of saliva here, you can find everything you can I don't understand anything about DNA now This is maybe an unfair set of quotations that I've just pulled out We come across people who are very sophisticated scientific knowledge But I would say about yeah, it's about 90 95 percent of people who we talked to when they began this process had very imperfect understanding of what was going on and Are still relatively sensitive about it and you get a kind of continuum of people who are like on the one hand I don't care. It just works. I'm just basically doing it by you know by row I'm just learning how to do it in order to and then you got more sophisticated people who are more and then You've got people who have no knowledge at all, but we're interested in kind of learning It's a kind of interesting range We as I say we went around the world Not well, yeah, nearly sit a circumnavigate and talk to various places But various people in various places. I'm going to give you some examples of how people have sort of thought about this in different ways across the world in different contexts. I Would say it's very much more popular in anglophone countries particularly Particularly in the US and in Australia and the UK I would say that That is actually starting to break down because of the kind of global nature of some of these companies But also because of things like social networks What we found out a lot about in Certainly in Australia in the US with genealogical tourism associated with DNA particularly people coming to Europe and And spending a lot of time coming over here So yeah global differences the Dutch Couldn't really care less about DNA They did do it and I went to the the NGV, which is the National Geographic Geological Society of Munich in Holland so it would be quite a lot of quite a lot of Family historians there and they work at that to my mind a much more academic interest in DNA in DNA they spent a lot of time doing various projects They were involved in university projects. They were interested not necessarily in order to some law They were much more interested in Cername and Y chromosome. They were much more bothered about the kind of academic application of DNA testing They weren't as bothered about the kind of More kind of what they weren't interested in ethnicity tool they weren't interested in any other stuff They were quite resistant actually to some of the major company what they were doing was was kind of building their own stuff One more tool in your research was what I was told by a big genealogist in that in the in Holland So yeah, the Dutch yeah, they were very very unbothered. I was quite upset I have a Dutch name and my my opal was from Amsterdam and I was feeling like I had some kind of connection However in Australia, yeah, absolutely absolutely go in for it. The Australian's really so bothered about DNA stuff and Possibly this is because it's a settler colonial context I would say that I use the word bigger me more than I've ever done before when I was in Australia Basically everyone I talked to had a bigger most at least one or two bigger most relationships in their path They were quite comfortable with this the historians I talked to But obviously DNA work allows them to kind of uncover this It's I think probably I don't know enough, but it would probably be the case also In Canada and the US and this is because of Scale and it's also because of colonial context being much more kind of imperfectly administered I would imagine and also people just escaping things. It's not because they're all convicts, although they're very keen about that Nowadays, Australia is very keen about having a convict ancestor much more complicated is the issue of indigenous DNA and how This is seen in the database It's a very complex thing about whether Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander DNA or Native American First Nations DNA If you're in the States in Canada, how that's how that scene in the database how it's been how it's been used And also how people In the contemporary moment talk about their relationship with these communities Most well a lot of people in the in Australia would have some kind of indigenous DNA in their in their in their background It's very common But then talking about being indigenous is a much more complicated thing So that's in Australia and also in settler societies which have native populations indigenous populations It's an incredibly complex and problematic issue to talk about your DNA and your inheritance in this way It's lovely quote from a lady in Canberra. Yeah, they came here to make a new start and here we are digging it all up again This kind of sort of slightly gleeful sense that you're gonna catch your ancestors out Being naughty, which they best they basically did a lot You know just human beings are human beings In South Korea DNA and DNA testing trans history does not exist. Absolutely nearly nearly Well, there is some of it, but very very very little basically this and the reason is this National Library of Korea and various other of the other Genealogical libraries of which there are like hundreds in Korea. They have these which called Jokbo They are basically kind of to every ten years a clan a name Will update their family history. So you have this very centralized Very centralized genealogical culture in Korea Korean Korean names are essentially Clam name a place name according to mail line And then there are other kind of variations, but most Koreans will be it We'll have this kind of assumption that their family history is in the library and they don't really have to do anything about it And this is something that's been going on since the 16th century became much more Prevalent in the 19 late 19th 20th century. So Korean culture very resistant to DNA testing for this for various reasons also because the Korean culture is very resistant to the issue of Ethnicity and many many many Koreans do not want to know their ethnic background is my understanding basically Similarly Asian Americans European Asians from Korean background also from Japanese and And Chinese background resistant to finding out about their ethnic background for various reasons to do with geopolitics and history essentially Yeah, so this is a job by this is what they look like And and this is a kind of essentially outlines the family history of a particular clan name back going back You know they go back centuries. They're quite a merit quite amazing very precise very centralized much less about the kind of Individual finding out their family tree and their family history So therefore the DNA you kind of aspect is not really very much there. This is my favorite picture ever This amazing woman through interpreter explained South Korean genealogy to me and this is what it looks like This is in a mixture of kanji script so you know So excuse me. So the script you familiar with from Japanese and from Mandarin Chinese and Korean script She she spoke at least three languages whilst doing this There's a great little map of the South Korea here. Anyway, I don't understand any of it So yeah, Korean Population very interesting genealogy very conceitful. You know, as far as they're concerned very very sure about their family history Not as bothered about the DNA in the states Similarly to Australia settler communities very much more interested in ethnicity about a massive complication about ethnicity, obviously This is Elizabeth Warren who's going to Native American Ancestry in the last six weeks or thereabouts which has been very much attacked by first nations and Native American population because they say rightly in the same way that our original people's would or first nations people in Canada would That's not actually that's not how becoming Native American happens You it's part of it possibly but actually DNA is is being kind of rejected by some of those communities as a marker of identity But you know the fact that she's even making a political point by trying to claim this identity through a DNA test I think it's pretty astonishing In the states we've had that people are more interested in this kind of sense of connectedness with using their DNA to be connected with their ancestors They're increasing a sense of self this kind of idea that they were kind of somehow part of you Yeah, quite a sweet thing. There's also also this is crystal. So see was a dino Navajo geneticist saying yeah They're basically they may say that they can find out Native American information from the database is but actually there's no There's no tribal level specificity No tribal nation accepts these results enrollment and quite a lot of the biomarkers in her opinion Used to generate these estimates were unethically procured and they were procured from from from the populations that have been no resemblance to To Native American tribes and populations. They're from Central and South America largely. So what she's basically saying is the indigenous Data makes no sense. So, you know, actually it's really problematic but that said the other thing people are interested in the state is whether they're going to go back to the the American Revolution or whether they go back to the Mayflower and They use basically the DNA to do this that the Dino is now adding a kind of way into doing that and it kind of gives a sheen of What's the word I'm gonna look for a sheen of kind of assurance and truth to this where formerly people had used You know standard tools of family history People are basically used People are basically used and DNA to really kind of underline stuff to the point now. We have two members of the Mayflower We can't see da our connections. I'm still claiming it for my girls So even though the DNA is actually saying to this person that they weren't related to people from the doors of the American Revolution They were still claiming it There's lots of instances of people basically getting their DNA information and basically ignoring what it tells them I'm saying well, I'm still viking. I don't care or whatever, you know, we're still go. We can still go back to 1780 or whatever What else did we get we got problems we got worries and this is the kind of major ethical issue that I would say Skeletons in cupboards have we got the right to reveal ancestors secrets? It's overwhelming And this what people were finding was that they were suddenly discovering and they had to deal with the consequence of this stuff in the Contemporary moment that when they had formally been working on archives that were you know, 200 years old There's suddenly they were discovering stuff for having put their DNA into the database, which they were not comfortable with Where there's a will there's an argument My grandmother has a stepson thinking that she's going to split the money between people and between us Person we talked to in So we spoke within one of the cities in Australia had discovered that she had a new cousin Who was possibly in line to inherit the massive estate that her uncle had died and left right about a month before she found this out And she was very very bothered about the kind of ethical issues of the ethical consequences of this how she was going to deal with this Obviously you will come across the various phenomena of people discovering that their parents aren't their parents or their grandparents or their grandparents And the problem is as people were pointing out If you're in the database then you can't get away from the database to a certain extent There's umpteen other people who can let the cow the bag somewhere quite a lot of family historians talked about how ethically Worrying they were how worried they were about having information Which might then be found out by other people that they were no longer necessarily in control with control And that this information which formally had been just you know the archive that you all work on and that's nice Was suddenly maybe having consequences in the contemporary world in the now And this is really quite quite for me. There's a massive responsibility people said and actually someone in Melbourne said this I brought I think twice now about having it done. Are you prepared and we had that quite a lot from people who had had who had found revelatory things and they were quite Excited about the revelatory things maybe not happy about them But they would maybe have thought twice before going through this again Um, particularly things like adoption people discovered things about adoption people discovered information about adoption It's a cottage industry people said discovering But also using this and obviously it's a very very positive thing It's very positive thing that you can use this in cases of adoption you can help people out at the same time This is raising issues about whether you should whether you could go whether it's a you should be able to do this Whether people should be forgotten whether people's right to be Not part of the adoption conversation should be allowed should be part of it. So this is Forcing people to have quite complex ethical conversations with themselves about their data Which they formerly had not had to deal with I would say so DNA is really pushing it You know it really helps I got into really my mother was a doctor We never knew anybody in her family nor from mothers. We finally got a little bit So basically is a is another adoption brick wall It does make a lot of difference to people But at the same time it can also be quite problematic because You also then have the issue which came up a lot in Australia about sperm donation and again This is about the contemporary moment that people are really worried about finding out about sperm donor So my husband found a child was an IVF sperm donor That was difficult and the laws for sperm donation the laws about revealing the anonymity of donors Change across states in Australia. They change across states in the US. They change across nations. They change across you know in the UK We different Ireland. We different across Europe So yeah sperm donors found children they were meant to be anonymous I think it was very problematic and suddenly you got people who are suddenly finding and Sperm donors in their background. They're finding adoptees in their background My cousin is biologically from sperm donation not my uncle's never been told With all this DNA. I'm just waiting for the day when he tests and we don't match and it's revealed So this is someone holding on to this information and not telling their cousin this and assuming that it will come out at some point And and there's a lot of this I don't know about you, but my understanding really has been that the family historians see themselves oftentimes is kind of Keepers of the family memory and there's a very there's a sort of duty to that and it's an amazing thing And it's a lovely thing But increasingly what DNA is doing is provoking people into hiding stuff Because there's suddenly discovering things that they don't really feel comfortable sharing or they're not confident about sharing Which but which is changing the way they see that their role and suddenly their role is slightly slightly challenging. I would say So to kind of bring this wrap this up a little bit What the other things that people kind of raised were were kind of things We might want to think about if you want to think about as a community over the next sort of five to ten years when this sort of Really starts to get established because we've really only been having tests done for six seven years You're yeah, even though it's massively expanding. There's a kind of foundational number Which is just settling their settling in and as a community you're getting better understanding the stuff It's becoming a hybrid. You're very clearly using it. You're very comfortable, etc. etc What's coming up? What do people think the worrying signs are that it's going to happen the worries that people have well The obvious one is about people's concern about what's happening to this day Whether this is truly the case or not people were worried about ancestry particularly Taking their data and selling it They're not doing it for public good One of our respondents talked about and people were kind of divided largely and they're probably in this room You'd be divided about this on the one hand people saw that actually they were getting a service and they were comfortable with that service And so the payoff was that their data was going to be being used in various ways They was going to be sold and that was as far as they were concerned. That was that that was a kind of that was good enough Well, this guy was very angry about the fact that they sell the data that you paid them for So what he was seeing was that actually it was much more uneven than that that you would pay for this service And then it was your data would then be sold. They may make money And I think that this is going to become more and more complex over the next years as as these companies do seek to leverage the data they have into profit, which is kind of their What they would wish to do and it's up to them. It's fine in some ways and How as a community you deal with that? It's not simply a matter of what happens about this being you know manipulated by pharmaceutical firms or whatever But where the data sits and how it sits into the future how it's kept How are you going to be able to know that this is actually something you will be able to look at in? 2030 40 years time as a group as a group where you'd be able to access this information in a hundred years time or 200 years time Where's it gonna sit and these kinds of issues about profit and about the commodification of this data? I think really have to be resolved at this point And also are they going to sell my results to whom and I think people are worried with it in a kind of mild anxious way not You know physically horrified but concerned about what's going to happen next with this stuff People are particularly bothered about technical things We've already heard about various ways of organizing technical stuff But a lot of folks were just put off by the amount of technical knowledge you needed Not just in terms of reading the data, but then keeping hold of it. So this is brilliant. I've got a Technical expert on spreadsheets. I tested six people. I got 1,300 lines of just names and ancestry All kinds of things and she's using all these different types of Tools all these different ways of collecting stuff, but largely she's at the end of this She was just like I don't know how the stuff Works. I don't know how to read it anymore My computer is just stuff full of files and files and files so I think the kind of the Exponential growth of information that we have is great on the one hand But you are coming up against skill absence and there are some people are brilliant This is something we're very comfortable with this but the majority of people really are And so you need a very good knowledge of computers. I've become an expert on spreadsheets And people saying it helps if you're analytical. Everyone here use spreadsheets when they're talking about their DNA Everyone comfortable with spreadsheets. I've got two people down here Seriously, like the amount of kind of bespoke systems that people had built to do their DNA work was quite astonishing I came across you know many many people who have Created their own spreadsheets or created their own software on you or coded this and that all these little bits of stuff that people had used Which is lovely, but was kind of just their own thing. You're just like this so much Effort is going into this stuff in order to try and read this in order to hold it And people are kind of evolving ways, which is lovely and brilliant But also spending maybe wasting time because they're building stuff, which is not gonna be You know usable in the future. They're building stuff, which is going to run out of run out of time in us I'm already mentioned this but people were really bothered about what happens next There are concerns about how the future the information will be used in the future This became into kind of focus with people talking about what happens to people's DNA data when they died and we oftentimes talk with people who manage the data of parents or various types of or siblings even who had died and they had that data and they were able to access and use that data But they were really concerned about The ethics of that people talking about inheriting data now you there are some Mechanisms who how this works in in various of the software various other databases But it is going to be a very live issue very soon in sort of 10-15 years time where this stuff is kept How it's kept how it's managed how it's organized a Great majority of the stuff that you would do as a family historian without genetics great majority of the work You would do would be working on records that were kept somehow by the state Somehow they were there were records about marriage records about death records about tax about About service in the military etc. Etc. And those are kept in archives and libraries and wherever in all kinds of amazing places Those things don't exist with the DNA archive. The DNA archive is kept In some databases that are commercial in some databases that are crowdsourced and not commercial, but there's no kind of At this point policy the collection for the future for instance So the genealogists of 20 of 21 19 might struggle to get hold of your DNA data For instance if they wanted to and I find that quite fascinating, but also quite challenging Where's it going to be held and the fact is that yeah, we are at the we're really in that kind of Revolutionary moment when this like everything's white brilliant and new But we have to think about what happens in 100 years time with this and where it's going to go And how how interoperable things are how obsolete stuff might become how Spreadsheets in 20 years time you will not will be looking at them thinking I don't know how to use these things You know has anyone got a floppy disk in their house for instance, you know computers change like that And we're all very comfortable with the ones we got right now, but everyone has got a draw full of Obsolete technology of obsolete phones and things that don't read this and Memory sticks you can't use any longer because the files are too old or whatever So this is just going to become even more problematic in the next 20 30 years So yeah, here's a good example my mother-law passed away a couple of weeks ago. I've got her DNA I'm using it like she wanted me to but what are the ethics around it now that she's passed and someone else said I feel I've inherited her DNA to look after now and that's an amazing lovely thing But also there's a duty there and it's quite there's no obvious thing to do at that point with this inherited DNA There's no obvious way to to use it really I guess And the final thing that people did talk about a little bit were obviously this came up This is that this case came up the Golden State killer case came up the way that law enforcement We use it possibly using the databases. It's shocking what you can discover about people from DNA and limited information people are concerned and it's not necessarily the case that they Were concerned for for good reason necessarily they would they were very anxious this this case made them very anxious And it turns out which had formerly been an interesting hobby a game a puzzle Tina saying which was had real-world application, which was mildly scary to people and and concerning And the other thing that concerned people the most was about people just pitching up with their information and not knowing anything And again, I sort of I think this is both a kind of challenging opportunity and an opportunity for you as a community There are millions of people in the database who have not done their family trees who don't care about their family trees All they want is the little ethnicity estimate because they got this thing for Christmas and they spat in a tube They sense it off and that's all they care about and they sit there in the database not helping or maybe helping in some ways But you know, they're not giving anything I think you could because of the number of them as a community You're gonna have to figure out how to use them how to either draw them in and make them part of what you're doing Or to work around them somehow Or as I was saying because they tend to be younger to try and actually develop ways in which you can communicate with them and use Their information, but also skill them in the in the amazing things that you've been doing for the last 50-60 years and that's me. Thank you very much for listening Thanks so much Jerome You might want to stand a little bit over here just to get out of the the beam of the overhead projector That's absolutely fascinating work that you've done and it's interesting to get the global perspective because we really only have the Irish and the British perspective from where we're standing and of course on the Facebook groups We have interactions with Americans as well the whole Southeast Asian Attitude to DNA and genealogy is very very different to what we have here But of course they have tested 50 million people in China Chinese yet, but They didn't ask Something of an ethical issue Using people's debt. Yeah, absolutely. Although yes, so the worry I have is that That we If you don't have a kind of understanding of the of the cultural differences about thinking about about genealogy and family history Then you end up imposing a way of thinking about family or kinship or and that's what is going to happen I would imagine in Southeast Asia if we're not careful because the major websites of our anglophone there from the US It's definitely what is being fought over in Australia and in the US about by between indigenous groups and and What they see as a kind of imposition of a way of thinking about family and about our connection to family and how this works And so that's one of the million myriad issues that there are around those things. So yeah, the Southeast Asian example is really fascinating to me because In China in Japan in South Korea Cross bits of Southeast Asia genealogy is really important families really important But it's completely different to what you would think about and it's differently organized and conceived of differently And it's it's theological and it has all these different things And there's a worry about kind of blundering in and going right I assume these things about these family groups Which don't really work in that way and DNA seems to be a way of kind of cutting through that because it's not it doesn't have the kind of Assumptions about family that you might have from the West But equally it then has not gone effects for identity which many many South Koreans wouldn't want to talk about I was nearly all of them It's other certain I know you're gonna be visiting other countries as well to continue the research But is there are there certain particular countries that you would like to target because of perhaps for historical reasons They might be quite averse to DNA testing Yeah, there are two well, there's one I'm going to Poland and the reason I said there were reasons for this The reason I'm going to put the Southeast Asian ones because they're interesting for that reason Australia in the US because of sort of settliness island because of kind of colonialism essentially Poland because it has an incredibly elaborated Public culture of genealogy, but it's all about aristocracy So you have this very kind of top-down version as I understand it from my friends of it and it's not Yeah, Polish genealogy is is very kind of I would I think you would reckon up with would conceive it as very Inflexible and a little bit. I'm maybe unfair, but I haven't been there. The other places are I want to go to Brazil but that I mean Because you know the DNA of your standard Brazilian is completely crazy, right? And that's brilliant But then you get into all kinds of issues about Indigeneity you get into issues about heritance about state that nationhood I'm going to Brazil right now is a little bit crazy and going and asking people to give you the information about their identity in Brazil right now is not something you want to get involved with really But I've got colleagues in Brazil who have talked to me about About this and they're just like this is it demonstrates how DNA is incredibly political issue because it's about identity And we can quite happily sit in the West Even though we're sitting in Belfast and and sort of think that this is not this is might be a neutral thing somehow And it's just about us and that but actually it's not and you're around the world You discover actually it's really not a neutral thing We have a question from this lady Absolutely, I don't know because I don't have the language manually although I have a bit of French I don't have enough French to go and talk to people in Senegal about this, but I think I probably should absolutely And if I had more money or I've had more time yet that would be where that would go but absolutely France and Germany who had particularly Interesting relationship with DNA testing and a complex relationship with DNA testing not that no one has everyone's had a complex one But there's a particular legal framework going on there right so and I would wish to go and talk with people Yeah, in those former colonies and see whether they are they have a similar thing But a similar way of talking about it as they as the Australians or the Canadians or the Americans do That said the Francophone and the German Former colonies Mine are I'm just thinking off the top of my head now don't have as a as elaborated family history culture Would I be right in saying that am I being coming up hot in Canada again? No, sorry the French do but the French former colonies and Algeria Senegal Code you are I don't know what whether you would say that they I mean I don't think they have as I would know What other whether they have as elaborated? family history culture, so Is it something peculiar about the post? colonial Anglophone experience that wasn't the case about for the French I'm gonna go out and live and say yes, but I don't know Absolutely, I'd like to think about that. That's a brilliant idea which one again Not something I can see but I think Yeah, yeah in front in France and in Germany am I right you caught you it was until quite recently the case that you couldn't Paternity testing it. Yes, there was legal Yeah, so there were legal issues about testing but how does that as I understand But I would bow only very recently isn't it and I think because of particular German political history There are issues about digging up your past in a particular way using DNA And I think they've been very careful going to France and Germany for those reasons and because yeah for the French legal system is is Raised eyebrow Yeah, so in Switzerland where you are able to do this there They're all kinds of clinics on there on the Swiss French border where people just go over and get their paternity test And there's this kind of cottage industry of paternity testing because you can't do it in front Yes, the French law dates to 1995 actually goes back that that far But they have been doing DNA testing in France for quite some time a family tree DNA's Affiliate eugenia has been doing it there quite a while. Yeah Yeah, so people are very very confused about the law, but still concerned about it as well because it carries a 15,000 euro fine and one year in prison so I Haven't been to New Zealand I went to Australia and lost my friends who kiwi said And I spoke with people in New Zealand in sorry Who were New Zealand who were from New Zealand? And if you're right, it's not the context I mentioned. I do apologize But yes, so I would wish to know more about that. What do you what's your sense of it? Yeah, because we've got we've got a lot of pioneer families as well and then our indigenous people said the Maori Are very closely her related to Hawaiians So their ethnicity comes up as Polynesian and there's a lot of really mixed families in New Zealand So it's one it's one country that has really interbreed if you like Yeah, and that you know, they say there's no full blood marries left because it is very has become very You know, it is much more common having lived in several countries in New Zealand I know it's my home and everything, but it's just normal to have mixed families and no one thinks anything Yes, so Donna's doing doing the general thing that a New Zealand person would say which is basically they're better than the Because of the ways in which these people's have become much more part of the community in all kinds of ways, right? And I yes, that's my understanding I just haven't been there, but what and I my understanding of this is from people in New Zealand heritage in Australia We've been doing this that one of my favorite things to talk to Australians about Europe and Particularly about European family history and how and English family history in particular British family history students in particular And they were quite rude about British family Oh, yeah, they're not very interested in stuff. They're just they're all they want to do is go back Yes, that many generations as they can they're just interested in them in their little trees and not interested in social issues like Immigration they were very very rude But they very very clearly thought they were doing something different and they had a different approach to family history similar in the States and actually I Yeah, there's a kind of clear sense that even with a kind of globalized ability if you to talk to someone in In New Zealand or in Japan or in Argentina using the various social networks Despite that there's still this clear kind of sense that there's a there's a Local culture and there's a local way of doing this and local way of approaching this I don't know so I talked about genealogical tourism, which is something that really I've only just discovered in the last year or so I talk into Australians Have you guys been abroad and done genealogy? Have you give me a has anyone ever been and have you right so some people have Have you done that as your primary focus for your visit abroad or was it saying you happen to do because you're in Ireland Or you were in Germany or whatever 55 so How come why are you saying this you weren't Absolutely, so there's it kind of adds to it right Yeah, so most people I spoke with in in Australia in the States had made a trip to Europe Intent to need to do to do genealogy and then quite a lot of them then had done other trips Were they done some on the site? But most of them had a kind of primary primary objective to do to do family history stuff and the idea that that concept of genealogical tourism is really interesting to me the idea that you were kind of You know that being in a place is important as much as and this wasn't they weren't just going to record offices They were going to the place and they were going to and and it does mean that Europe in Europe We're much more we compared to them We feel much more at the center of things because you know my my friends in Holland were like well My family's lived in a generation, so I don't have to do much of this DNA stuff They were very clear there was a kind of clear link with that with the With the nation with that with the country they were in whereas if you're from a Settler society there must be I think kind of sense that you need to go back and and inhabit that space Yes, and so the art so yes, so I should I should have mentioned so mainly why yes the one reason I'm so Positive about family history societies that I spent so much time working with them And they've been so generous and wonderful about opening up space and Time and giving all kinds of things back. It's been amazing. What a great set of folk and I would want to go and talk with the people who aren't Involved in that way, but I there is just no way of organizing that I don't know how you would do it unless you're the company and that and that becomes quite complicated So I suspect that if I'm ancestry or family tree or whomever they're looking to do some form of research But then getting past data protection getting interested in the ethical issues I don't know how you would do that really in a specific way like the questions We were talking because we were talking people who had come voluntarily who were quite happy to talk and who were Who have been given a lot of assurance about what was going to happen with the data and I said do not give me You know chapter and verse on your centre Morgan's or I don't want to know that stuff because that's yours So I don't know how you would do the research on the people who don't come to these things I have thought about quite carefully and about just I mean, I guess Using social media is one way of getting to a group to groups who are just engaging On a less sort of day less Committed way But then you've got you've got make choices about who you're talking to right? And it's just difficult really so yeah The lot of this data is very skewed because it is people who already self-interest are already interested committed to this But I don't think there's any other way of doing it But I could like and really find without having an army of research systems who are gonna farm stuff from Twitter and farm stuff On Facebook and just you know do that really you could do that you do that Well, it makes sense right? But it also makes sense just in terms of sheer numbers right so ancestry you'll correct me if I'm wrong Which I probably am ancestry have about three million subscribers to the rest of their stuff And they were 15 million people in the database so 12 million people are not Genealogists by that token right so you've got an enormous amount of people in this database who are not genealogists Who us who are involved in your world and you have to welcome them somehow? But who are not doing trees who are not going to meetings who are not talking to folk who are not on wet on social media sites Who are just doing it because it's you know something they got for Christmas And you're using them right because you're using their database and it's sharpening your results So they are useful to you And it's giving you better data and it's giving you crisper clearer data and that's good So they are good people for being there But at the same time I can see absolutely how frustrating it must be so to a gap come up again and again against people who have just got nothing in there in their On there on their profile at all But yeah, 11 percent makes about sense that makes carl. You're right I have visibility of the number of east Asian data sets primarily Japanese and Chinese and I do see what you're seeing with regards to the You know definitive ancient information, but what I have noticed is there are a considerable number of Adoptees And there's quite a lot of those data sets on there are massively keen to find out absolutely who the parents are and what does tend to happen And another thing for the political. I mean Japan and Korea are very similar to Ireland and Britain historically There's been interpreting for millennia and they are quite closely related So they get data back to say that they're Significantly Japanese and vice versa. Yeah, but in terms of penetration of direct-to-consumer testing in East Asia Have you observed anything with we gene taking any market share or breaking down this barrier to testing? First off, yeah, I don't tease are the largely where that this is I don't mean in the states as well That's where this that's where this is being done people of East Asian heritage a lot and Although there's also a counter kind of argument about Asian American identity being kind of worrying because people have got Compto with the idea of Asian American then it gets broken down into these various different ways or less Asian American they were expecting So there's that in terms of the director to consumer Not from the people I was talking about but they were largely in Seoul and they were power in Busan and they were largely Oldest old schooler genealogists essentially they were again because of the language issue. I've mainly we're going to Places that had a decent organization already and so I was basically looking for people who would talk to me and so The information they were giving me is what they were thinking about how things were so yeah to my mind They're probably not seeing the whole picture It's clearly a great area, but like How do you make the growth happen? The name I think it's mostly Yeah, there is some Japanese testing for health and this and the Japanese site And this is very broad does he does seem to not be particularly bothered about DNA testing for anything really? And there is a historical issue associated with that absolutely and an ethnicity issue We have a question here Whenever we were speaking earlier about like some people don't want to do their tests because Like the government or third party would harvest their information And it brings up like legal and ethical issues and things We never like I hear people talk about that I'm sort of like like you need to suppose with a few reactions because if governments and third parties are not going to do it through genocidal sites are only imagined in another way to do it anyway because of all the revolution Yeah, so if we go back to this guy here You know you're a public good. I think this is a really fascinating idea that he's sort of he's concerned about The shift from using public resources so that using archives all kind public records all kinds into something which is private and Business and commodity and enterprise and those movements. I think are really are worrying And the kind of fact that your net that I would say that nearly everyone I spoke with had to have their own Ethical stand on this nearly everyone has a thought about it So you go from just toiling away in the archive going to the local history society going to your thing And that's yeah, that's all you have to suddenly having to think about whether you're comfortable with your data being used in this way So you're right. It is a personal thing because you have to say well, I spit in the tree I do that but quite a lot of the lot better than I do quite a lot of the Privacy information around that DNA information has changed over the last three or four years And I'm not sure how well informed people who use these services necessarily are about that So for instance when it was formally the case that you would sign off a privacy thing for ancestry Until about three years ago That would essentially give them leave to use your DNA in all kinds of ways that they would wish for ever In any way in any form they would like to and I've got these great quotes from it on another talk Where it's just like in any form that they wish in any in any way around the world forever in perpetuity royalty free This is terrifying You're giving what you're giving to this company now you sign in a form consent Which means that you're comfortable with your data being used in their experiments essentially and you're all part of a massive Experiment going on right now Ancestry are trying to work out how to use that that all this data They've got not just to create better drugs or just some drugs But also how they can use it from a scientific point of view and they're publishing papers Try and read this data So you become When you were formally using the ancestry sites up until about 2012 You were just using that their sensors information or their VMD information or whatever you're using you were the agency was with you You were taking the information out now. You are giving them information which is being used And that is good and bad and you all have to make your decision about that But I'm not certain people who are getting it for Christmas and sticking it in their mouth and sending it off Unnecessarily reading all the privacy stuff or thinking through the bio-ethic issues or whatever. I don't I just don't know really It was actually a lawyer in America They wanted your data, but in fact that all that That verbiage indicated was that you have if your ancestry going to give you your results They have to have the right absolutely absolutely It was actually misinterpretation of the language and they change it to clarify. They change it to clarify But they also change it If you want to have your results you can research it's a separate And you now and you say that you're in for consent Your data is only used to give you your results and to Improve the product. It's not used externally without your consent but You're absolutely In theory, but also absolutely only goes back to the it's an individual choice Yes, absolutely, and you sign the informed consent thing because you know who cares Um, or who reads the privacy stuff who does you know, you're absolutely right to the letter of the law In black and white it's fine, but whether that's actually There is an opt in it There is a specific opt in and you can opt out for medical research But also the medical well, sorry the medical research it does say medical research. It's like scientific scientific scientific research But the research that but if you could drill down into what they mean by that it's very complicated What they mean by by medical research and what medical research they're actually doing is Is also complicated. So I'm more cynical than you don't know, but I just find that Talk it work. No, I'm not I'm not going to look more single. That's unfair reading the data and talking to people I was it was not clear to me that people were as informed as all that and they were taking their their individual Duties but also that's one bit also people were terrified about this whether they were Whether they you know, they were really anxious about this whether it was true or not So you're right. There's there's all kinds of issues around the language and stuff But people were just really deeply concerned about this issue Without because because going back to that Icelandic novel because there was a there's suddenly all this stuff and people are Suddenly able to start reading it in all kinds of ways and you're like, well, what that was in me. How do I know that? All I did was get a bit of saliva and suddenly you can make all these things I mean you can have all these these links and it's that's the kind of for me the fascinating thing is it seems so amazing But it's also terrifying surely at the same time Yeah, you look at your look at your uh, your data your your your chromosome information You're like, how many numbers and how does that have anything to do with me? I don't know. Anyway, sorry But with a lot of these You know that the golden state and all these other revelations DNA only plays a very small part of this and it's actually the The broken online genealogy databases and facebook and we now live in this big data world and it's that big data that is actually Making all these making this knowledge accessible Without all that other big data DNA itself would be completely me. Oh, no, absolutely. No, so I was very little actual DNA information that's revealed is just you match someone There's not it's algorithm. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, so what I'd be saying is that basically loads of the The DNA information is not very significant. It's what that is then able to be read into it by the data, right? But what about everything else? Yeah, by big data um Yeah, and so I think that Again, this is a transformation, right? People started off using ancestry because they liked reading old things on their computer And it was easy to go to a library and something that having this conversation in their heads about big data And whether they're going to be turned into a you know, and it's all it's the shift, right? And the new people are coming in that for them this they're approaching it a different way But I think older users people have been using uh, don't be a family historians for 10 20 years. This is quite a Paradigm shift in their heads to have to have that knowledge to have to read the The documentation to go right am I comfortable with this being done? And if I'm not I'm cutting off all this ability to read these things Um, and I think that there's been such a shift when I started talking to people people were resistant to this family historians resistant to the test now Nearly every family historian has done it because it's kind of there's a proof of concept people are like, okay This is fine and everyone's just dived in Um fine, but there's that's that's changed the way you do things And I think it would be quite rare now to find a relatively serious family historian who didn't have dna information about themselves um In 10 years that's happened like that, you know And in 10 years we've gone from not knowing anything about our DNA as a group to Knowing significant amounts and in 10 years time who knows what we'll find that we may well find a cure of cancer Yeah, that'd be amazing But also other things might happen like border patrol might start using this which is the uk is looking at pretty seriously And and they are in the us or narcotics might be using it to profile So there's all these unintended consequences and it's about size again, right? You've got 25 million people You're suddenly able to do things with that data Which you hadn't been able to do when there was only 10 000 people in that for instance It becomes it's so manipulative But my work was as well that um, if there wasn't any sense, I'm sure the government funds They find another way of doing it. Well, they absolutely Yeah What's interesting, but isn't it also fascinating going back to the golden state killer and going back to the kind of issues about about that health investigation that With respect a relatively small collection of people Family historians have suddenly become really important, you know, so ancestry as an organization is ancestry is now has gone from being a little Well, not a little bit relatively small information company now being a massive biotech company in like five years That transformation is quite saying no one would have predicted this I'm pretty certain 15 years ago No one would have said well the cutting edge work on forensics and genetic identity is going to be being done by family historians Which it is And isn't that astonishing right that you are now the kind of you know, the real the white White heat of technology is being is being experimented upon on you guys And you're kind of providing all kinds of test cases and why he's into this absolutely astonishing Where you know, I wouldn't have predicted that when I started working on you The ancestry data has some health Informative markers and that they're not reported today, but they could be Well, they but that's how ancestry one of the reasons that ancestry has grown so fast Because they're not they're not obliged to give a health day Oh, absolutely But they would have to go through all kinds of legal hoops in order to do that Which is why 23 and me has grown slower because they give health They give healthy information and that there is much more much more Legislation for health So there's much much less about family history or associate with dinner Which is why anti history been a you've been so flexible been able to just grow as fast as possible because there's much less legislation So again, this is a cutting-edge thing about data and about information about how we legislate as a group of people as a group of Countries or whatever for global data and where it sits and where it you know, where it's being used and who controls it And that's happening very obviously with social media like facebook and twitter and those kinds of but it's happening with ancestry as well And again, you know, you lot are at the cutting edge of this stuff, which is amazing Right well, we have to call it a day there, but thank you so much for a wonderful presentation