As a result of the “digital turn”, the humanities are currently in a process of rapid transformation, with consequences that reach far beyond the confines of academia. The lecture series “New Horizons: Confronting the Digital Turn in the Humanities“ explores how the digital turn is changing research, teaching and dissemination in the humanities. At the same time, the series aims to historicise and contextualise this process. Amid far-reaching 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 of the series was developed to address three interconnected issues relating to the digital turn in the humanities:
All invited speakers were chosen because they are leading experts in their fields and on the specific topics we wish to address. Below is a list of the lectures that took place in 2019. We conducted interviews with all our speakers before their lectures, and both the interviews and the lectures were put online. Three remaining lectures (by Julia Noordegraaf, Smiljana Antonijević and Christine L. Borgman) are planned for 2020.
Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities
Prof. Dr Andrew Prescott, University of Glasgow
Unframing Infrastructure: The Story of Research Infrastructure in and through the Humanities
Prof. Dr. Patrik Svensson, Umeå University
Digital Cultural Heritage: the case of the Rijksmuseum’s past, present and future
Saskia Scheltjens, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Beyond Close and Distant Reading: Strategies for the radical contextualization of historical text
Prof. Dr Tim Hitchcock, University of Sussex
The Spatial Humanities, Deep Mapping, and the Future of History
Prof. Dr David Bodenhamer, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Reflections on the past, present and future of digital archives
Prof. Dr Jane Winters, School of Advanced Study, University of London
A New Humanism’: Expo ‘58, Robert Busa, and the First Humanities Computer Center
Prof. Dr Steven E. Jones, University of South Florida
Signals and Noise: Extracting Patterns of Cultural Expressions from Digitized Sources
Dr Melvin Wevers, KNAW Humanities Cluster, Amsterdam
New findings and new questions about the origins of Digital Humanities: on the state of the art of histories of the Index Thomisticus project of Fr Roberto Busa S.J.
Dr Julianne Nyhan, University College London
Digital History Advanced Research Projects Accelerator
The Digital History Advanced Research Projects Accelerator (DHARPA) adds a new dimension to the research activities of the C²DH by focusing on R&D. → read more
Media Monitoring of the past
Using text mining and data visualisation to open up collections of digitised historical newspapers for research. Since its launch in 2017, impresso has developed a methodologically-reflected technological framework to enable new ways of engaging with the multilingual digital content of historical newspapers and new approaches to address historical questions. → read more
Technological Pasts in the Digital Age
9th Tensions of Europe Conference The 9th Tensions of Europe conference was organised by the C²DH and held at the University of Luxembourg from 27 to 30 June 2019 https://www.tensionsofeurope.eu. → read more
Digital History as Trading Zones
Under the term “digital history”, historians have experimented with tools, concepts and methods from other disciplines, mostly computer science and computational linguistics, to benefit the historical discipline. → read more
Women on the march from 1919 to 2019 in Luxembourg
Forum Z or the interaction of the C²DH with the public The aim of the Forum Z (Z for Zeitgeschichte or contemporary history) series is to promote a critical, open debate on topical issues in contemporary Luxembourgish and European history. The hundredth anniversary of women’s right to vote in Luxembourg was an anniversary not to be missed! While the National Museum of History and Art (MNHA) marked the anniversary with a major exhibition on universal suffrage, this Forum Z used it as a starting point for a broader reflection on what has changed for women over the past century. → read more