As a result of the so-called digital turn the humanities are currently in a process of rapid transformation, with consequences that reach far beyond the confines of academia. This lecture series explores how the digital turn is changing research, teaching and dissemination in the humanities. At the same time, the series will historicise and contextualise this process. Amid far-going claims of shifting research paradigms and a possible scientification of humanities research it is more urgent than ever to cast a critical eye on the continuities as well as discontinuities that new technologies bring, in order to avoid techno-scientific essentialism. How exactly are the humanities being transformed as a result of the digital turn? To what extent can we speak of hybridity as the new normal; a situation where most humanists combine traditional/analogue and new/digital research practices?
The programme has been developed to address three interconnected issues relating to the digital turn in the humanities:
- Transformations : How has the digital turn transformed the humanities in recent years? What affordances has it brought?
- Practices : Case studies: how are humanities research practices changing as a result of the digital turn?
- Genealogies : What is the ‘pre-history’ of digital humanities? How did we arrive here?
PROGRAMME 2019-2020
30 January 2019
Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities
Prof. Dr Andrew Prescott, University of Glasgow
6 March 2019
Unframing Infrastructure: The Story of Research Infrastructure in and through the Humanities
Prof. Dr. Patrik Svensson, Umeå University
25 April 2019
Digital Cultural Heritage: the case of the Rijksmuseum’s past, present and future
Saskia Scheltjens, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
29 May 2019
Beyond Close and Distant Reading: Strategies for the radical contextualization of historical text
Prof. Dr Tim Hitchcock, University of Sussex
26 June 2019
The Spatial Humanities, Deep Mapping, and the Future of History
Prof. Dr David Bodenhamer, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
18 September 2019
The Promise and Challenge of Born-Digital Data for Historical Research
Prof. Dr Jane Winters, School of Advanced Study, University of London
October 2019 (in planning)
Big Data, Little Data, or No Data? Scholarship, Stewardship, and Interdisciplinary Research
Prof. Dr Christine Borgman, University of California, Los Angeles
6 November 2019
A New Humanism': Expo '58, Robert Busa, and the First Humanities Computer Center
Prof. Dr Steven E. Jones, University of South Florida
November 2019 (in planning)
Signals and Noise: Extracting Patterns of Cultural Expressions from Digitized Sources
Dr Melvin Wevers, KNAW Humanities Cluster, Amsterdam
18 December 2019
The Promise And Perils Of Oral History In Writing Histories Of Digital Humanities From Below
Dr. Julianne Nyhan
15 January 2019 (in planning)
Audiovisual heritage
Prof. Dr Julia Noordegraaf, University of Amsterdam
February 2020 (in planning)
Scholars as Bricoleurs: The Plurality of Digital Humanities
Dr Smiljana Antonijević, Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
With the kind support of
