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.
清华大学数字人文与文学研究国际工作坊由清华大学中文系和芝加哥大学 Text Lab在2017年6月联合举办。 来自芝加哥大学的霍伊特·朗、苏真和朱远骋，哥伦比亚大学的戴安德等十余位学者出席了本次会议并作主题发言，人文学院副院长刘石教授致辞，中文系系主任王中忱教授作会议总结和展望。这次会议吸引了校内外百余人参加。与会学者围绕数字人文的统计学方法、文本细读和历史主义三种研究方法进行了广泛而深入的探讨，并对国内外人文数据库、中国数字人文研究现状等进行了介绍。
The Tsinghua University Digital Humanities project is led by an interdisciplinary team centered at Tsinghua University, with substantial support from the university itself. The core team comprises faculty and students from the School of Humanities, the Department of Computer Science and Technology, and the Centre for Statistics, as well as scholars from institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Macau University of Science and Technology, and Zhejiang University. Funded by a major project from the National Social Science Fund, the team has established a digital humanities journal, a comprehensive portal website, and the ‘Xuancong Digital Humanities Intelligence Platform’, and has introduced an experimental course for undergraduates at the Dayxin College.
The digital humanities portal website is a comprehensive digital humanities platform founded by the team, supported by Tsinghua University’s ‘Double-High’ plan and involving contributions from Zhonghua Book Company, CNKI, National Studies Network, and Chinese Online. DHLIB is the first of its kind in the Chinese-speaking world, aiming to provide a platform for ‘academic exchange, open access, interdisciplinary interaction, and collaborative sharing’.
Key members of the Tsinghua Digital Humanities team include Liu Shi, Dean of the School of Humanities; Sun Maosong, Executive Vice Dean of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Li Feiyue, Deputy Director of the Chinese Department; and Deng Ke, former Deputy Director of the Centre for Statistics. The team also co-founded the academic journal ‘Digital Humanities’ with Zhonghua Book Company.
On November 12-13, 2022, the ‘Voice, Network, Future: The Third Tsinghua Digital Humanities International Forum’, organized by Tsinghua University’s School of Humanities and the editorial office of ‘Digital Humanities’, and co-organised by the Bucknell University China Research Institute, was successfully held both online and offline at Tsinghua University. More than sixty scholars from over forty universities and research institutions, including twenty overseas institutions, presented their latest research findings.
Key Academics
Prof Liu Shi is the Dean of the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University, specializing in literature and cultural studies.
Prof Sun Maosong is the Executive Vice Dean of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, focusing on artificial intelligence, large language model and its applications in social science, humanities and arts .
Prof Li Feiyue is the Deputy Director of the Department of Chinese, with expertise in Chinese literature and digital humanities.
Dr Deng Ke is the former Deputy Director of the Centre for Statistics, specialising in statistical methods and their application in digital humanities, such as content analysis.
Key Projects
Projects and achievements in the Centre for Digital Humanities at Tsinghua University provides a range of digital tools and resources designed to support digital humanities research and projects. It aims to facilitate academic collaboration, data sharing, and the development of digital resources.
Ming-Qing Routes and Literature (MQRL) is a digital platform developed by Professor Jian Jinsong. It focuses on the comprehensive digitalization of ancient Chinese routes and is dedicated to innovative research in Ming and Qing literature. The MQRL platform provides digital services for the study of ancient Chinese roads, offering detailed and accessible data on historical routes. It supports innovative research into Ming and Qing literature, exploring how geographical routes influenced literary works and historical narratives.
Intelligent Ancient Books Platform draws on the concept of knowledge graphs and integrates various technologies such as big data analytics, location-based queries, clustering queries, spatial analysis, data association, network analysis, machine indexing, and crowdsourcing. The platform aims to transform Chinese classical literature and research outcomes into a graph-based, intelligent format. This approach creates a comprehensive big data platform for ancient books, combining browsing, querying, research, and appreciation. It seamlessly integrates aesthetic reading, knowledge learning, and immersive experiences into one unified system.
Chinese Classical Poetry Semantic Search – AI Jiuge: Tsinghua University’s Natural Language Processing and Social Humanities Computing Laboratory has introduced an AI tool abbreviated as “Jiuge Semantic Search,” utilizes a retrieval algorithm that combines a deep neural network model based on BERT with an improved longest common subsequence matching tailored specifically for the characteristics of classical Chinese poetry. This algorithm is better suited to capture the complex semantics of classical poetry, resulting in more accurate, detailed, and enriched search outcomes. Additionally, the team implemented an approximate nearest neighbor search mechanism using Annoy technology, which employs a tree data structure to maximize the speed of similarity calculations between two dense vectors. They also developed an optimized longest common subsequence mechanism based on an inverted index, further enhancing the speed of string matching.
THULAC (THU Lexical Analyzer for Chinese): This is a Chinese lexical analysis toolkit developed by the Natural Language Processing and Social Humanities Computing Laboratory at Tsinghua University. The toolkit offers functionalities for Chinese word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging.THULAC is trained using the world’s largest manually segmented and part-of-speech tagged Chinese corpus, containing approximately 58 million characters, which gives it robust tagging capabilities. On the standard dataset, Chinese Treebank (CTB5), THULAC achieves an F1 score of 97.3% for word segmentation and 92.9% for part-of-speech tagging, comparable to the best-performing methods on this dataset. The combined speed for word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging is 300KB/s, processing around 150,000 characters per second. When performing word segmentation alone, the speed can reach 1.3MB/s.
Several prominent scholars attended the workshop, including Hoyt Long, Su Zhen, and Zhu Yuancheng from the University of Chicago, as well as Deandre from Columbia University, among others. Professor Liu Shi, Vice Dean of the School of Humanities, delivered the opening remarks, and Professor Wang Zhongzhen, Head of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, provided a summary and outlook at the conclusion of the event. The workshop attracted over a hundred participants from both within and outside the university.
The attending scholars engaged in extensive and in-depth discussions on three primary research methods in Digital Humanities: statistical methods, close reading of texts, and historicism. They also provided an overview of domestic and international humanities databases and the current state of Digital Humanities research in China.
Dr Godwin Yeboah is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Warwick. His background includes research software engineering and the application of geospatial technologies in research or teaching, SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy), computer science, GIS, geoinformatics and photogrammetry, geodetic/geomatic engineering, and industrial experiences in software/geomatic engineering.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities?
I consider DH as a burgeoning field of scholarly endeavour that exists at the crossroads of digital technologies and humanities disciplines. It fosters innovative scholarship methods that are collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally driven in research, teaching, and publishing. DH employs digital tools and methodologies to advance the study of humanities, utilizing digital resources creatively. The transdisciplinary nature of DH becomes particularly apparent when it involves the GLAM sector, an acronym for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums which are mainly cultural institutions usually resourced to provide access to cultural heritage knowledge.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
During my tenure as a Senior Research Fellow, I developed an interest in Digital Humanities (DH). I was utilizing digital tools and innovative methods to tackle various research questions. It was then that I recognized the necessity of applying digital tools and methods to address research questions within the humanities. To boost research excellence at the University of Warwick, I decided to join a small team of research software engineers to advance DH research. My passion for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, along with my experiences in various roles in the UK, Germany, and Ghana, likely contributed to my interest in Digital Humanities. Currently, as a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Warwick, I work with colleagues in several faculties, centres, and beyond the University. My work involves the application of digital tools and methods in the humanities, a key aspect of Digital Humanities, but my broader scope goes beyond DH and fall within the remit of research computing at the University of Warwick.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects?
I am leading digital research on various projects within the digital humanities at the University of Warwick. One such project is an innovative, interactive, multi-search interface I developed for the French Theatre Calendar from 1799-1804. The downloadable dataset is in French and includes both Gregorian and Revolutionary dates. The online database I developed likely surpasses others in its coverage of theatre from this period. Its multi-search functionality significantly enhances researchers’ understanding of early 19th-century theatre.
4. And a DH project you like?
There are so many DH projects that I like! One of the DH projects that I like, which has already been featured on our website here, is the “Mapping Women’s Suffrage” project. This initiative amalgamates the most recent studies and resources from scholars, local history buffs, genealogists, record keepers, and the general public. Its aim is to uncover and geographically represent the frequently obscured lives and sites associated with everyday women’s suffrage advocates. Concurrently, it constructs an unparalleled depiction of the shape and geographies of the suffrage movement nationwide during this significant era in women’s history.
Digital Humanities at Oxford refers to the collective efforts, initiatives, and resources dedicated to the application of digital tools, methods, and resources for humanities research (Torch Oxford, nd). Rather than a traditional research Centre or academic department, it encompasses a wide range of disciplines and research areas, including collaborative efforts of multiple institutions and departments within the university. This includes Torch Oxford, Oxford e-Research Centre, Bodleian Libraries, academic departments from various divisions, museums, Oxford University Press, Continuing Education, and colleges with digital humanities initiatives.
Aligned with the Humanities Division’s strategic focus on Digital Humanities’ growth and investment, Oxford’s scholarship aims to integrate digital technologies and social collaboration on a large scale. This vision is supported by a robust computational and data infrastructure, including resources like Advanced Research Computing engines and archives of ORA-Data, showing a shift towards interdisciplinary scholarship that transcends traditional boundaries and leverages digital tools and social collaboration for impactful research (Source: Oxford Mosaic, nd).
Teaching on DH
The University of Oxford offers a wide range of digital scholarship skills training opportunities for students and staff alike. Bodleian Libraries LibGuides hosts research skills workshops covering areas such as GIS and Open Access. For more specialized training, the Taylor Institute offers termly courses such as Digital Editions, focusing on creating digital editions of texts.
Since 2018, Oxford University has been hosting an annual Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School Summer School(DHOxSS), aimed at engaging students and researchers of all levels with experts on various digital humanities topics. These initiatives collectively underscore Oxford’s dedication to fostering expertise and innovation in the digital humanities domain. While Oxford does not offer Digital Humanities doctorate courses, staff members of the Oxford e-Research Center and the Oxford Internet Institute can offer joint supervision for DPhil students.
The DH Team
Dr Giles Bergel, Digital Humanities Research Officer, and Digital Humanities Ambassador, Interested in XML markup for transcription, bibliographic, text and image databases, virtual research environments, project management and documentation. Led the Computer vision approaches to the study of early printing project.
Dr Nicholas Cole, Senior Research Fellow, and Director of the Quill Project, interested in legal history and digital solutions for the editing and display of formally negotiated texts. Led the Quill Project.
Dr Megan Gooch, Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities Support at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and Director of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School. Her is experienced in supporting research data management, digitisation at scale, and digital skills.
Dr Kevin Page, Senior Researcher, interested in music information retrieval, musicology, computational musicology, digital libraries, applied linked data and semantic web, cross-discipline sharing and re-use of data, distributed repositories and preservation. Part of the Mapping Manuscript Migrations project.
Dr Tara Stubbs, Associate Professor in English Literature and Creative Writing, and Digital Humanities course development at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE).
Located within the humanities department, Digital Scholarship @ Oxford is a new initiative aimed at transforming the landscape of digitally enhanced scholarship in Oxford (Oxford Mosaic, nd). It defines ‘digital scholarship’ as utilizing digital technology to enrich scholarly materials and methods, particularly in the humanities (Oxford Mosaic, nd). While there are some resemblances between the work of Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities, there are key distinctions between its practice in Oxford. First, Digital Scholarship’s collaborative efforts extend beyond the humanities division, whereas Digital Humanities centres on the humanities. Second, Digital Scholarship encompasses methods and technologies potentially applicable to any academic field. Third, Digital Scholarship integrates digital methods into existing disciplines rather than establishing a new separate field. In essence, Digital Scholarship complements traditional scholarship by leveraging digital technology. In 2022, Oxford introduced its first MSc in Digital Scholarship, the intent is not to establish a new discipline, but rather, it offers comprehensive training for innovative work in existing disciplines (Oxford Mosaic, nd).
The Research Center for Digital Humanities at Renmin University of China, officially established in December 2019, is a pioneering institution dedicated to the advancement of digital humanities. Drawing upon Renmin University’s strong research and teaching resources across a variety of fields, including information resource management, literature, history, art, Chinese studies, philosophy, and journalism, the center focuses on theoretical research, practical exploration, talent cultivation, and academic exchange in the field of digital humanities. It plays a significant role as a co-founder of the ‘China Digital Humanities Alliance’.
The center is led by Professor Feng Huiling as the director, with deputy directors from various departments contributing their expertise. The center includes a large number of researchers and graduate students from many different disciplines, all engaging in exploration and integration of digital scholarship, digital reconstruction, and digital memory. It supports a threefold development approach in teaching, research, and practice, highlighted by significant contributions to digital academic resources, 3D visualization, and regional or thematic digital memory projects. The center has several active international collaborations and has been instrumental in the dissemination of digital humanities knowledge through its journal and various activities, positioning itself at the forefront of digital cultural development and social science research in China.
Teaching on DH
RUC-DHC degree programs include undergraduate and postgraduate degrees with specialized tracks in digital humanities:
The Digital Humanities major offers a curriculum that includes information resource management, data visualisation, digital cultural heritage, Python programming, machine learning, digital memory, natural language processing, digital design, and social network analysis, among others.
The Doctoral Degree in Digital Humanities is hosted by the School of Information Resource Management. It offers a specialized curriculum tailored to the emerging field of digital humanities, encompassing topics such as information management, data visualization, cultural heritage preservation, computational linguistics, and digital arts.
Key Academics
Prof Huiling Feng holds several key positions at Renmin University, including Director of the Digital Humanities Research Center and professor in the School of Information Resource Management. Her expertise is in archival science theory, electronic records management, digital memory, and digital humanities.
Prof YuenanLiu, Dean of the School of Information Resource Management at Renmin University of China. Her main research areas include electronic document management, digital archiving, and government information resource management policy.
Dr Heng Hu focuses on Chinese historical geography, Qing history, and digital humanities. He led the development of the ‘Digital Qing History Lab’ and the ‘Qing History Data Sharing Platform’.
The School of Information Resource Management at Renmin University of China, the Digital Humanities Research Center, the Beijing Studies Center of Renmin University, and the China Digital Culture Group collaboratively released a digital collectible series named ‘Beijing Memories: Ice Fun’. This series was officially launched on the ‘Zhongshu Collection’ platform on November 25, 2022. The public can access and purchase these digital collectibles by downloading the ‘Zhongshu Collection’ app, scanning the provided QR code, and completing a registration with real-name verification.
Other info
The centre also runs a Spark Training Camp, aimed at providing student researchers with a comprehensive training program in digital humanities. Drawing inspiration from international practices in digital humanities centers, the camp adopts a ‘theory + methods + projects’ approach to education. Leveraging the foundation of the ‘New Digital Humanities Youth’ initiative at RUC-DHC, the camp invites interdisciplinary mentors to provide academic guidance and direction. Through active participation in practical projects, students engage in theoretical learning and deepen their understanding of digital humanities concepts.
Prof Stuart Dunn is a Professor of Spatial Humanities as well as the Head of Humanities in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King’s College London. His research interests includes history of cartography, digital approaches to landscape studies, and spatial humanities.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities?
I see DH as any study of the human record which makes critical use of digital methods, and/or computational ways of thinking. Of course much of the human record itself is now digital, to a much greater extent than it was when I started out in the field. This has broadened DH’s focus from a discipline which simply uses the digital to understand the humanities better, to include study ofthe digital itself from a humanities perspective. For me, this makes the roots of the field in the way that humanists think about the digital world more important and interesting than ever.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
I came to DH relatively late in life, towards the end of my PhD. I was researching a very traditional, non-digital field, which involved reconciling different mechanisms for dating prehistoric events (if only I had known then what I knew now about the possibilities of, for example, network analysis). I discovered that a key need for my research was understanding relationships between different pieces of evidence from different locations – e.g. the relationship between deposits of the same type of pottery from Egypt and Cyprus, and how they relate to ancient layers of volcanic ash in the Aegean islands. This started me thinking about how such data could be systematically structured, compared and mapped. So having constructed a rudimentary database of all this data, I basically taught myself GIS so that I could analyse different concentrations of different types of evidence across different regions and at different times.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects?
Over time, my interest in GIS and maps became my primary focus. A project which exemplifies this is the Heritage Gazetteer of Cyprus, which was funded by the A G Leventis Foundation. The HGC aims to provide a framework for thinking about place in Cypriot heritage, and a data resource to trace the evolution of placenames over time. Any toponyms occurring in literature before 1918 can be entered and associated with one or more existing locations, which enables us to build networks of references across the island. This allows us to ask, for example, what the differences are between the town of “Pano Calepia” described by Florio Bustron in 1549, and “Kallepia” described by George Jeffrey in 1918. How has its spatial footprint and relationships with other sites changed, and how do we document these changes?
4. And a DH project you particularly like?
There are so many! One I particularly admire is the Digital Periegesis project , which is using digital mapping methods to re-examine the work of Pausanias of Magnesia, and in the process asking exciting new questions about the relationships between text, time and place.
介绍 Stuart Dunn教授
个人简介
Stuart Dunn 教授是伦敦国王学院艺术与人文学院的人文学院院长兼空间人文学教授。他的研究兴趣包括制图历史、景观研究的数字方法以及空间人文学。
Dr Antonina Puchkovskaia is a Lecturer in Digital Humanities at King’s College London at the Department of Digital Humanities. Expert in spatial humanities, digital public humanities, as well as cultural heritage data representation and visualisation.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities?
I always define Digital Humanities through the community of digital humanists who are willing to experiment with interdisciplinary methodologies applied to humanities scholarship. By pushing the boundaries and working at the frontier, this approach helps to see the bigger picture and makes the research more transparent, accessible, and interactive.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
Being a cultural historian by training, I landed my first academic job at a very STEM-based university and found myself quite lonely among computer scientists and web developers. So, I started googling whether there was any intersection between humanities and information technologies. That’s how I first came across ‘digital humanities.’ I then participated in NYC DH Week, where I met the community and felt very inspired. This experience motivated me to propose the launch of a small DH centre to senior management. This initiative evolved into an international and interdisciplinary effort, culminating in exciting collaborative DH projects and the launch of the first MSc in Digital Humanities in Saint Petersburg.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects?
My very first DH project as a PI was St. Retrospect, an interactive mapping project aimed at representing culturally significant landmarks in Saint Petersburg. The visualisation is structured around the relationships between locations and historical figures, supplemented by historical overviews of the sites and the notable people associated with them. To collect data, we applied machine learning algorithms, such as NER (Named Entity Recognition), to extract locations and names from openly available digitised and machine-readable sources and then verified this information through crowd-sourcing. As an open-source project, its mission is not only to raise awareness about culturally significant sites within the local community but also to engage the community in evaluating historic locations and collecting relevant data.
4. Tell us a DH project you particularly like?
This small-scale project, Pages of Early Soviet Performance, holds significant importance despite its size. The project utilises machine learning to generate multiple datasets from early Soviet illustrated periodicals related to the performing arts. The project’s importance lies in its attempt to answer crucial questions, such as: what if this collection could be accessed as data? what patterns—of words, phrases, or images—can be discovered across the entire collection? By employing computer vision techniques and training a YOLO (You Only Look Once) real-time object detection model, textual and image data are being produced to facilitate new avenues of research on Soviet culture during the first decades after the October Revolution. Although this may seem like a niche project, it significantly contributes to the methods and approaches for working with digitised sources, extracting valuable data, and making it publicly accessible to foster further research.
尽管这是一个小规模项目，但「早期苏联表演的页面」项目具有重要意义。该项目利用机器学习从与表演艺术相关的早期苏联插图期刊中生成多个数据集。其重要性在于试图回答关键问题，如：如果这个收藏能作为数据访问，会怎样？在整个收藏中可以发现什么模式——单词、短语或图像？通过使用计算机视觉技术和训练一个YOLO（You Only Look Once）实时对象检测模型，生成文本和图像数据，以促进对十月革命后最初几十年苏联文化的新研究途径。尽管这似乎是一个小众项目，但它在处理数字化资源、提取有价值数据和公开获取以促进进一步研究的方法和方法方面做出了重要贡献。
Dr Arianna Ciula is the Director & Senior Research Software Analyst of King’s Digital Lab. She is experienced in digital humanities research and teaching, research management, as well as digital research infrastructures.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities?
Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that studies the integration of computational methods and software engineering processes in the arts and humanities research and education as well as in the cultural heritage sector and creative practices. Increasingly, it addresses wider issues around the design and use of digital technologies and their impact on digital cultures and societies.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
As a teenager, I enjoyed scientific disciplines – math in particular – but was also fascinated by ancient cultures and societies. I was lucky in high school to be part of an experimental programme that combined classics with STEM disciplines including computer sciences. I went on to get a degree in communications studies with a specialization in technologies to then follow up with a PhD that combined manuscript studies with software-intensive research. This is when I found out that an active international humanities computing community existed; I enrolled in an MA at KCL on those topics in parallel with my PhD and became active in Digital Humanities projects and networks.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects?
I have been involved in many projects over the years, but one I would like to highlight relates to my research on one of the methodologies of cross and inter-disciplinary collaboration which I believe is foundational in DH, namely (data) modelling. This activity has been analysed mainly from a STEM perspective but it is the research in DH that makes emerge the epistemological value of modelling: by modelling objects and phenomena into data structures we know things differently. A collaborative project which resulted in a book (Modelling between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice) reflected on the topic by making emerge the importance of language in modelling as well as its pragmatic dimension (modelling is creative and contingent). I hope the book demonstrated how humanities disciplines can give an important contribution to the conceptualisation of modelling specifically and more in general to how we shape our conceptual and physical world with the design and use of digital technologies.
4. And a DH project you particularly like?
This is a project I have bene involved in only tangentially to support its funding and delivery. It is called Digital Ghost Hunt. Led by KDL Senior RSE, Elliott Hall, it was a very inventive collaboration with theatre and performance professionals, schools and pupils, cultural heritage institutions and the public. By integrating digital technologies into well designed experiences, it showcases the imaginative power of collaboration across sectors and generations and the value of thinking creatively and of tinkering with digital technologies.
Founded in the 2020, the Centre for Digital Inquiry (CDI) is a cross-faculty research centre within the University of Warwick; it brings together humanities and social science research through critical digital research (Centre for Digital Inquiry, 2022). The centre develops and engages with digital research techniques and tools, and takes up the digital as a substantive critical topic, contributing to the existing knowledge of culture and society.
The CDI approaches the digital as a complex and multifaceted domain. On one hand, they acknowledge the vast array of computational technologies that fall under the umbrella of the digital, including smartphones, search engines, text mining software, and recommender systems. These technologies represent opportunities for innovation and research, offering exciting possibilities for exploration and development. On the other hand, the CDI recognizes that the digital realm is not without its problems. They view the digital as ‘problematic’, notably in its association with challenges such as e-waste, trolling, misinformation, surveillance, micro-tasking, platformisation, and drone warfare.
By approaching the digital as both a domain of technological advancement and a domain fraught with challenges, the CDI adopts a balanced perspective that acknowledges the opportunities and risks inherent in digital technologies. This approach allows researchers to engage with the complexities of the digital world and work towards solutions that promote positive outcomes for society. (Source: University of Warwick, 2023)
Key CDI People
Dr Bryan Brazeau, Associate Professor Liberal Arts, interested in the intersections between the digital, history of the book, early modern literature and poetics, ontological affordances, and digital pedagogy.
Dr Carolina Bandinelli, Associate Professor Media and Creative Industries, and Co-Director of the Centre of Digital Inquiry, is interested in the digital culture of love. Part of the Digital Love in the Time of Covid project.
Dr Godwin Yeboah, Senior Research Software Engineer. His background is interdisciplinary in nature cutting across research software engineering and the application of geospatial technologies in research or teaching, SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy), computer science, GIS, geoinformatics and photogrammetry, geodetic/geomatic engineering, and industrial experiences in software/geomatic engineering.
Dr Michael Dieter, Associate Professor in the Centre of Interdisciplinary Methodologies, and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Inquiry, interested in developing inventive methods for interface criticism, genealogies of media at the intersection of aesthetic and political thought, contemporary media art and publishing practices after digitisation. Part of the COVID-19 App Store and Data Flow Ecologies project.
Dr Nerea Calvillo, Associate Professor in the Centre of Interdisciplinary Methodologies, interested in the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution.
Prof Mark Knights, Professor in the Department of History. Interested in the period 1600-1850.
Dr Naomi Vogt, Assistant Professor of modern and contemporary art history. Interested in art and visual culture of the late 20th and 21st century; moving image within history; documentary practices; the post-internet; visual anthropology; artists’ films; rituals; the circulation of tropes and iconographies; art and knowledge.
Beyond the centre, the university’s Digital Arts and Humanities Lab supports the use of technology in Arts and Humanities. Notably, it offers Digital Humanities Certificates for Post Graduate Researchers and Staff by offering hybrid courses that targets enhancing digital technologies in research, teaching, outreach and beyond the university.
Dr Barbara McGillivray is a Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Cultural Computation at King’s College London at the Department of Digital Humanities. Expert in computational and quantitative methods and research questions in the Humanities.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities?
For me, Digital Humanities are a methodological laboratory for the humanities, where researchers can experiment with new computational and quantitative methods to answer old and new questions in the humanities.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
I became interested in DH during my PhD in computational linguistics, when I worked on adapting techniques from computational linguistics to the study of the Latin language. I gradually realised the potential of using these methods beyond linguistics research, which has given the opportunity to work in many interdisciplinary projects.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects?
One of my favourite projects took place in 2018-2019 and was funded by a small grant by The Alan Turing Institute (described here). I put together a team involving two statisticians, a digital humanist, and a classicist to study the change in meaning of words in ancient Greek using Bayesian statistics. It was the first time I led such a diverse team to study an old phenomenon with new methods.
4. Tell us about a DH project you particularly like?
I have worked on historical newspapers and I particularly like the Impresso project, which has digitized and enriched a vast collection of European historical newspapers, enabling researchers and the public to explore rich archives through advanced text mining and analysis tools. I like it because it democratizes access to valuable historical materials, fostering new ways of doing historical research.
