Month: October 2024

[中文版]

Name 

Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media

Short Description 

The Centre of Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media at the University of Manchester, previously known as the Centre for Digital Humanities (DH@Manchester), is one of the UK’s largest hubs for humanities scholars. Drawing on Manchester’s rich cultural and technological heritage, the centre fosters innovative collaborations between computational sciences and humanities disciplines. It employs advanced digital methods and technologies to address cutting-edge research at the intersection of digital technology, society, and culture. Key areas of focus include spatial humanities, digital media, humanities data visualisation, gender and sexuality studies, critical algorithm studies, platform studies, digital visual culture and art, and heritage digitisation.(Source: University of Manchester, nd) 

Teaching on DH 

The Centre offers a variety of Digital Humanities (DH) courses. Since September 2019, it has provided an undergraduate minor program in DH, teaching digital methods such as mapping, text mining, and data visualization to explore how digital media and technology shape our lives and future. This program allows undergraduate students on single honours degrees to choose a Minor in Digital Humanities. Upon completing two DH course units, students will receive a Certificate in Digital Humanities. The program is designed to help students develop new skills, integrating technical expertise, creativity, and critical thinking—essential abilities for success in the workplace.

In 2025, the school will welcome its first cohort of BA Digital Media, Culture, and Society students. This program is designed to foster a historical and global understanding of digital technology while developing the digital skills necessary to address major challenges in media. Additionally, the Centre offers a Master’s degree in Digital Media, Culture, and Society, which equips students with the skills and knowledge to critically engage with key debates and issues in the study of digital media and technology.(Source: University of Manchester, nd). 

Key Profiles

Dr Giulia Grisot, Lecturer in Digital Humanities. She specialises in the investigation of cultures and identities in literary and non-literary texts, using NLP and machine learning to examine represented space and encoded sentiments.

Dr Sam Hind, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture and Programme Director of the MA in Digital Media, Culture and Society. His research interests include digital navigation, machine vision, algorithmic decision-making, platform (auto)mobility, and mobile play. Whereas, his expertise lies at the intersection of media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and digital geographies.

Dr Ashley Mattheis, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture. Her expertise lies at the intersection of critical media studies, visual rhetorical criticism, and digital cultural analyses through the lens of feminist STS and Black feminist theories.

Dr Claire Reddleman, Lecturer in Digital Humanities (Contemporary Art and Digital Culture). Her research and creative interests are in maps, contemporary art, photography and digital collage, surveillance, and the critique of capitalism

Dr Luca Scholz, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities.His research is concerned with analysing and questioning data in historical and humanistic inquiry. He combines archival research, computational methods, and visualisation to study spatial history, intellectual history, and the representation of weather and climate.

Dr Łukasz Szulc, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture, and Programme Director of the BA in Digital Media, Culture and Society. He specialises in critical and cultural studies of digital media at the intersections of gender, sexuality and transnationalism, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland.

Dr Joanna Taylor, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Digital Humanities, based in the department of English Literature, American Studies, and Creative Writing. Her research bridges the frontier between literary studies, digital and environmental humanities research.

Dr Shuaishuai Wang, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture. His research lies at the intersection of platform studies, critical algorithm studies, digital economy, and queer media.

Image credit: University of Manchester, nd

Image credit: Shields, 2022

曼彻斯特大学数字人文中心

名称

曼彻斯特大学数字人文中心（DH@Manchester）

简要描述

曼彻斯特大学的数字人文学科、文化与媒体中心（前身为数字人文学科中心 DH@Manchester）是英国最大的数字人文学者聚集地之一。该中心依托曼彻斯特丰富的文化和技术遗产，推动计算科学与人文学科的创新合作。通过运用先进的数字方法和技术，中心致力于在数字技术、社会与文化交汇的前沿领域开展研究。研究的重点领域包括空间人文学科、数字媒体、人文学科数据可视化、性别与性研究、算法批判研究、平台研究、数字视觉文化与艺术以及遗产数字化等。

(资料来源: 曼彻斯特大学，未提供日期）

数字人文教学

该中心提供多种数字人文学科（DH）课程。自2019年9月起，中心开设了数字人文学科本科辅修课程，教授数字方法，如地图绘制、文本挖掘和数据可视化，帮助学生探索数字媒体和技术如何塑造我们的生活和未来。该课程允许单一荣誉学位的本科生选择数字人文学科辅修，完成两门数字人文学科课程单元后，学生将获得数字人文学科证书。该课程旨在帮助学生发展新技能，结合技术专长、创造力和批判性思维——这些都是在职场中取得成功的关键能力。

2025年，学校将迎来第一批数字媒体、文化与社会（BA Digital Media, Culture, and Society）本科生。该课程旨在培养学生对数字技术的历史性和全球性理解，并发展解决媒体领域重大挑战所需的数字技能。此外，中心还提供数字媒体、文化与社会（Digital Media, Culture, and Society）硕士学位课程，帮助学生掌握技能和知识，批判性地参与数字媒体与技术研究中的关键辩论和问题。

 (资料来源: 曼彻斯特大学，未提供日期）。

关键学者

Giulia Grisot博士，数字人文学科讲师。她专注于通过自然语言处理（NLP）和机器学习技术，研究文学和非文学文本中的文化与身份，分析所呈现的空间和编码的情感。

Sam Hind博士，数字媒体与文化讲师，以及数字媒体、文化与社会硕士课程主任。他的研究兴趣包括数字导航、机器视觉、算法决策、平台（自动）移动性和移动游戏。他的专长位于媒体研究、科学与技术研究（STS）以及数字地理学的交汇点。

Ashley Mattheis博士，数字媒体与文化讲师。她的专长位于批判性媒体研究、视觉修辞批评和数字文化分析的交汇点，通过女性主义科学与技术研究（STS）和黑人女性主义理论的视角进行探讨。

Dr Claire Reddleman博士, 数字人文学科讲师（当代艺术与数字文化）。她的研究和创作兴趣包括地图、当代艺术、摄影与数字拼贴、监视以及对资本主义的批判。

Luca Scholz博士, 数字人文学科高级讲师。他的研究关注于在历史和人文学科研究中分析和质疑数据。他结合档案研究、计算方法和可视化技术，研究空间历史、思想史以及天气和气候的呈现。

Łukasz Szulc博士, 数字媒体与文化高级讲师，以及数字媒体、文化与社会本科课程主任。他专注于数字媒体的批判性和文化研究，研究性别、性取向和跨国主义的交汇点，特别关注中东欧，尤其是波兰。

Joanne Taylor博士，十九世纪文学与数字人文学科讲师，隶属于英语文学、美国研究与创意写作系。她的研究跨越了传统文学与数字人文学科的前沿，探索两者的交集。

Shuaishuai Wang博士，数字媒体与文化讲师。他的研究位于平台研究、批判性算法研究、数字经济和酷儿媒体的交汇点。

图像来源: 曼彻斯特大学, 未提供日期

[English Version]

1. 你如何定义数字人文？

定义是对事物内涵与外延的界定。数字人文的内涵，我认为可以简单地表述为数字与人文相结合的领域，其外延则有鲜明的开放性特征，无法也没有必要做出确切界定。一方面“数字”和“人文”都没有明确的边界，数字世界常变常新，人文世界宽广无边。如《周易》所言，“文明以止，人文也”，包含人类社会各种文化现象的“文明”皆为人文，足见其广阔。另一方面，“数字”和“人文”多种元素的多样化交织交融，又不断生成很多新现象新事物，聚集在数字人文的大帐篷之下，内容和形态更为丰富。随着数字人文的多方位发展，我们对其本质的认知将逐步加深，从对其内涵的抽象将更为科学精准成熟，至少目前，尽可能保持“数字人文”概念的开放性是合理且有益的。

2. 是什么让你开始对数字人文感兴趣的？

 我的专业是档案学，档案学若干核心概念与数字人文的关联把我引进数字人文。一是“档案”概念，iSchools把数字人文作为发展方向之后，我从相关文献和学术活动中发现数字人文广泛使用“档案”(Archives）一词，与“档案学”中的“档案”概念有交叉有差异，让我看到了“档案”概念在新领域的新含义。二是“社会记忆”，它是档案的基本属性，也被历史、文学、哲学、艺术等人文学科所关注，纳入数字人文之中。三是 “档案资源开发”的数字化转型，其原理、路径、工具、方法、成果形式等与数字人文多有吻合，作为社会生活原始记录的档案是数字人文项目常用的优质资源。在这些概念、理论、方法的相遇中，我对数字人文产生了越来越浓厚的兴趣，走进了这个宽广且充满魅力的领域。

3. 可以给我们分享一个你参与的数字人文项目吗？

 我们团队十余年来从事“数字记忆”的研究和建构，从2013年起搭建了“北京记忆”数字资源平台(http://www.bjjy.cn)。古都北京有3000多年建城史，近900年建都史，其厚重悠久的文化底蕴也逃不脱时间冲刷的流失，我们希望在数字世界尽可能真实地复现这个伟大城市的过往。“北京记忆”的基本架构是前站后库，“前站”是用网站群形式开展数字叙事，为每一个专题制作一个文化网站，以大量文献为基础，使用图文、视频、动画、建模、游戏、数据可视化等方法，生动呈现其历史脉络和面貌，相当于一部部数字专题史；“后库”是将有关文献资料建成多模态数据库，按照知识组织规范，通过搜集、加工、组织、存储等实现北京历史文化资源的聚合和智能检索。这是一个长期持续性项目，复合应用多种数字人文方法，目前已上线23个专题网站，并在此基础上开发了图书、数字出版物、数字藏品(NFT)、线下光影展、跨时空教学场景等多种衍生产品，前后吸引了数十名教师、数百名学生以及多家数字文化公司的参与，为穿越时空传承传播大型城市历史文化做了很多创新性探索。

4. 以及一个你喜欢的数字人文项目？

我所在的中国人民大学已经开展了数字人文本硕博三个层次的专业教育，为了给学生们提供丰富的学习资源，我们建设了多模态“数字人文案例库”，目前已输入近千个案例条目，260个优秀案例，其中很多项目我都很喜欢，比如中国历代人物传记资料库（China Biographical Database, CBDB）、“影谷”（THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW）、“上海年华”（上海图书馆）、“文都时空”（南京大学）等等。我想介绍一个我和很多学生感兴趣的项目——都铎网络（The Tudor Network）。 

这是一个由来自英国、德国不同大学、不同学术专长的研究人员合作开展的，基于英国国家档案馆收藏的15—16世纪都铎王朝时期12万封书信档案的数据分析项目，这些信件跨越近百年，涉及2万余人。该项目对全部书信内容做了文本挖掘，采用收信数、发信数、结点等多个指标进行相似度排序、整体趋势线分析、异常值分析等方法，显示每个人的通信对象、频度等特征，以及通信人之间的复杂关系，进而对书信内容加以分析，揭开了这些书信中的尘封历史。我们喜欢这个项目独特的历史价值和文献价值，项目团队唤醒了沉睡500多年的书信档案，对其中各种数据进行了可视化和科学严谨的分析，还原了一段鲜为人知的历史内幕，其中一些曲折离奇的史实令人惊叹。

Meet Professor Huiling Feng

1. How do you define Digital Humanities

A definition involves delineating the connotations and denotations of a concept. In my view, the connotation of Digital Humanities can be succinctly expressed as the field where digital technology and the humanities intersect. Its denotation, however, has a distinct characteristic of openness, making it neither necessary nor feasible to define it precisely. On the one hand, neither “digital” nor “humanities” has clear boundaries—the digital world is ever-changing, and the world of the humanities is vast and boundless. As the I Ching says, “civilization halts and becomes humanities,” indicating that “civilization,” encompassing various cultural phenomena of human society, is part of the humanities, showcasing its vastness. On the other hand, the diverse interweaving and merging of multiple elements from “digital” and “humanities” continuously generate new phenomena and new entities, all of which gather under the large tent of Digital Humanities, making its content and forms increasingly rich. As the multidimensional development of Digital Humanities continues, our understanding of its essence will gradually deepen, leading to a more scientifically accurate and mature abstraction of its connotation. At least for now, maintaining the openness of the concept of “Digital Humanities” is both reasonable and beneficial.

2. How did you become interested in DH?

My field of expertise is Archival Studies, and several core concepts in Archival Studies are closely related to Digital Humanities, which drew me into this field. First is the concept of “archives.” After iSchools adopted Digital Humanities as a development direction, I noticed through relevant literature and academic activities that the term “archives” (Archives) is widely used in Digital Humanities. This usage overlaps yet differs from the concept of “archives” in Archival Studies, which revealed to me new meanings of the concept of “archives” in this new field. Second is “social memory,” which is a fundamental attribute of archives and is also a focus in disciplines like history, literature, philosophy, and art, making it part of Digital Humanities. Third is the digital transformation of “archival resource development,” where its principles, pathways, tools, methods, and forms of outcomes often align with those in Digital Humanities. As original records of social life, archives are often valuable resources used in Digital Humanities projects. These encounters of concepts, theories, and methods led me to develop an increasingly strong interest in Digital Humanities, drawing me into this broad and fascinating field.

3. Tell us about one of your DH projects

For over ten years, our team has been engaged in the research and construction of “digital memory.” Since 2013, we have been developing the “Beijing Memory” digital resource platform (http://www.bjjy.cn). The ancient city of Beijing has over 3,000 years of history and nearly 900 years as a capital. Its rich and long-standing cultural heritage has not escaped the erosion of time, and we hope to recreate the past of this great city as authentically as possible in the digital world. The basic structure of “Beijing Memory” includes a “front-end” and a “back-end.” The “front-end” uses a website cluster to conduct digital narratives, creating a cultural website for each topic. Based on extensive literature, we use methods like text, images, videos, animations, modeling, games, and data visualization to vividly present its historical context and features, akin to a series of digital thematic histories. The “back-end” involves building a multimodal database of relevant literature and materials. Following knowledge organization standards, we gather, process, organize, and store these resources to achieve the aggregation and intelligent retrieval of Beijing’s historical and cultural resources. This is a long-term and ongoing project that applies a variety of Digital Humanities methods. Currently, 23 thematic websites are online, and based on these, we have developed books, digital publications, digital collectibles (NFTs), offline light and shadow exhibitions, cross-temporal teaching scenarios, and other derivative products. The project has attracted dozens of teachers, hundreds of students, and several digital cultural companies, contributing significantly to the innovative exploration of preserving and transmitting the history and culture of a major city across time and space.

4. And a DH project you like?

At Renmin University of China, where I work, we have already launched a Digital Humanities program offering master’s and doctoral degrees. To provide students with rich learning resources, we have built a multimodal “Digital Humanities Case Library,” which currently contains nearly a thousand case entries, including 260 outstanding cases. There are many projects that I like, such as the China Biographical Database (CBDB), “The Valley of the Shadow,” “Shanghai Memory” (Shanghai Library), “Wendu Time-Space” (Nanjing University), among others. I would like to introduce a project that both I and many students find intriguing—the Tudor Network.

This project was a collaborative effort by researchers with different academic specialties from various universities in the UK and Germany. It involves data analysis of 120,000 letters from the Tudor period (15th-16th centuries) held by the UK National Archives. These letters span nearly a century and involve more than 20,000 people. The project conducted text mining on all the letters, using metrics like the number of letters received and sent, nodes, and other indicators to perform similarity sorting, overall trend line analysis, outlier analysis, and more. This revealed the characteristics of each person’s communication patterns, including their correspondents and frequency, as well as the complex relationships between correspondents. Further analysis of the content of the letters unveiled the hidden history within them. We appreciate this project for its unique historical and documentary value. The project team awakened letters that had been dormant for over 500 years, conducted rigorous scientific analysis and visualization of the data within, and reconstructed a little-known segment of history. Some of the intricate and surprising historical facts uncovered are truly astonishing.

Image credit: University of Reading, nd

[中文版]

Name

Digital Humanities (DH) Hub at the University of Reading Library

Year

2022 

Short Description

Originating from the Digital Humanities Project, spearheaded by Professor Roberta Gilchrist, the Digital Humanities Hub is a collaborative endeavour situated within the university’s library. Established under Professor Gilchrist’s leadership in 2022, the DH Hub at the University of Reading is committed to fostering research innovation in Digital Humanities (DH) while nurturing ambition and encouraging experimentation within the University’s Heritage & Creativity theme (Oliva, 2022). This hub defines DH as the intersection of digital technologies, Arts and Humanities, and scholarly communication. It offers a range of support towards digital research, from offering DH knowledge and skills to assistance in developing research proposals and grant applications. Moreover, the hub’s ‘Community of Practice’ provides a platform for university researchers, staff, and postgraduate students interested in DH to collaborate, share ideas, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of digital research. Its overarching objectives include elevating the quality of Arts and Humanities research at Reading and driving innovation through DH principles, digital tools, and methodologies. (Source: University of Reading, nd).

Key Profiles 

Dr Mara Oliva, Digital Humanities Academic Champion, Associate Professor in History and Lecturer in Modern American History. She leads the Community of Practice and can provide mentoring and subject-specific advice for digital research projects. Expert in the political history of the US in the 20th century, with a particular focus on the interface between domestic and foreign policy.

Professor Roberta Gilchrist,  Research Dean, Heritage & Creativity, Professor of Archaeology. Expert in medieval sacred heritage, religion and gender, monasticism, magic, death and burial, health and the life course, as well as key archaeological studies on Norwich Cathedral and Glastonbury Abbey. She established the DH hub at the University of Reading. 

Key Projects with Links

1. The Legacies of Stephen Dwoskin’s Personal Cinema
2. Digital Beckett Manuscript Project
3. Staging Beckett
4. Modernist Archives Publishing Project / MAPP

Image credit: Hazelwood, 2018

 

雷丁大学图书馆数字人文中心

名称

雷丁大学图书馆数字人文（DH）中心

成立年份

2022

简介

源自数字人文项目，雷丁大学图书馆数字人文（DH）中心于2022年在吉尔克里斯特教授的领导下成立。作为大学图书馆内的协作倡议，该中心致力于在数字人文（DH）领域推动研究创新，同时培养雄心，并鼓励在大学的遗产与创意主题中进行实验 (Oliva，2022）。该中心将DH定义为数字技术、艺术与人文以及学术交流的交汇点。它提供各种支持，从提供数字人文知识和技能，到协助制定研究提案和申请拨款。此外，该中心的「实践社区」为对DH感兴趣的大学研究人员、工作人员和研究生提供了一个平台，可以在此协作、分享想法，并讨论数字研究的挑战和机遇。其主要目标包括提升雷丁大学的艺术与人文研究质量，并通过DH原则、数字工具和方法推动创新。因此，该中心的建立标志着雷丁大学数字人文发展的重要时刻，从个别项目和专业领域转变为由跨学科专业团队支持的充满活力的实践社区（来源：雷丁大学，未注明日期）。

关键人物

Mara Oliva 博士, 数字人文学术鼓励者，历史副教授和现代美国历史讲师。她领导实践社区，并可以为数字研究项目提供指导和专业建议。她是20世纪美国政治史的专家，特别关注国内外政策之间的界面。

Roberta Gilchrist 教授，遗产与创意研究院院长，考古学教授。她是中世纪神圣遗产、宗教与性别、修道院主义、魔法、死亡与埋葬、健康和生活历程的专家，以及诺维奇大教堂和格拉斯顿伯里修道院的重要考古研究。她在雷丁大学建立了DH中心。

主要项目及链接

1. Stephen Dwoskin的个人电影遗产
2. 贝克特数字手稿项目
3. 贝克特戏剧舞台
4. 现代主义档案出版项目 / MAPP