Friday, November 15, 2013

Don't miss our final meetings for 2013: The #alt-ac Track


Last week's session on alternative academic careers was extremely well attended - so we decided to run two follow-up sessions to help generate outcomes for our upcoming #alt-ac career development workshop at DHA2014.

Don't forget to put these meeting dates in your diaries:

Lost in translation: Preparing CVs for alternative academic careers

Fri 22 Nov, 2-3pm, iVEC boardroom (in Physics Building, opp Reid Library)

 

Questions for discussion

  • How can we translate academic skill-sets into CVs for non-academic jobs?
  • What additional experience and competencies are most advantageous - and how can we develop these during our candidature?
  • Technology has lowered entry barriers to develop technical skill-sets and make your ideas a reality. You don’t need to ask for permission to unleash your creativity. Take a look at Digital Humanist Tim Sherratt’s website and Wraggelabs as an example.
  • Is your digital footprint the new CV?

How should I prepare?


Imagining new spaces: Strategies to conceptualise and build alternative academic careers during your PhD

Fri 13 Dec, 2-3pm, Location TBC (Likely to be the UWA Club - pls bring a laptop or tablet)

 

Questions for discussion

  • Are there 'new rules' for completing a PhD in the humanities?
  • If so, how do they differ from conversational wisdom?
  • How can universities better prepare PhD candidates for non-academic careers? Can postgraduate students contribute to this kind of structural change?
  • Much of the literature regarding #alt-ac careers originates from North America. What specificities are unique to Australia?

How should I prepare?

  • Review the readings from our first #alt-ac session.
  • Many digital humanists have personal websites. Browse a selection of websites and consider how and why scholars express their values, experience, research interests and skills.
    • Tim Sherratt - Manager of Trove
    • Jason Ensor - Digital Humanities Research & Technical Development Manager, University of Western Sydney
    • Paul Arthur - Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Western Sydney
    • Bethanie Nowviskie - Director of Digital Research & Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library
    • Seb Chan - Director of Digital & Emerging Media, Smithsonian Museum, New York
    • Ryan Hunt - Postgraduate Student, University of Western Ontario

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Next Fri 8 Nov - “Tenure is broken. Please give me tenure.” Exploring alt-ac careers in the humanities



PhD candidates and early career researchers in the humanities are often advised that few will secure tenure-track positions. Given the realities of the competitive  academic job market - why aren't more of us discussing hybrid and alternative career options? Join us next Friday to investigate a growing movement towards alternative academic (alt-ac) careers.

When: Friday 8 November, 2-3pm
Where: Arts room 1.33 (CHE meeting room).

Questions we'll be asking include:
  • What does an alt-ac career look like?
  • What are the most effective alt-ac career building strategies?
  • What are the main challenges associated with hybrid careers and how might they be overcome?
  • What is the relationship between Digital Humanities and alt-ac?
  • How could UWA better prepare early career researchers in the humanities for non-academic careers?

Readings:


Bethany Nowviskie, The #alt-ac Track: Negotiating Your ‘Alternative Academic’ Appointment, Chronicle of Higher Ed, August 31, 2010.

Brian Croxhall, Five Questions and Three Answers about Alt-Ac,  7 January 2012.

Lisa Spiro, What Is *She* Doing Here? Crafting a Professional Identity as a Digital Humanist/Librarian, #Alt-academy, 7 May 2011.

Tom Scheinfeldt, Toward a Third Way: Rethinking Academic Employment, 6 May 2011.

Source: HASTAC

Also see:

http://www.gradhacker.org/

http://versatilephd.com/



Saturday, September 28, 2013

This Friday! A report from DH Conference 2013 (Nebraska) by Toby Burrows

We're excited to be back from hiatus! Over the past few months we've enjoyed IAS Digital Humanities masterclasses from Harold Short and Paul Arthur, along with a keynote from Alan Liu. With the DHA 2014 conference being held in Perth between 18-21 March 2014 it's an exciting time to be exploring this dynamic field.

Here are four things you should know:



1. Our next meeting will be held 2-3pm on Friday 4 October - A report from DH 2013 (Nebraska) by Toby Burrows

Toby attended DH2013 at the University of Nebraska in July and will be reporting on some of the highlights, with particular emphasis on 'get involved' activities including; DH Commons, GO-DH, Around DH in 80 Days, ADHO Special Interest Groups and 4humanities.org. We're keen to encourage DH experimentation and outcomes from the Digital Antipodes in 2014 and this session should offer plenty of ideas to help those new to the field to tip their toe in the water.

*****
IMPORTANT: Please note the  venue for our DH session this Friday 4 October (2-3pm) has changed.
We will be meeting at the UWA iVEC facility which is located on the ground floor of the Physics building (entrance opposite the Reid Library or through the main Physics foyer). The iVEC team have generously offered us the use of their boardroom for this meeting.
***** 


Toby has also suggested a thought-provoking reading for us all.
Dr Anne Galloway, 5 Things About Ubiquitous Computing That Make Me Nervous, The Design Culture Lab, March 31, 2013 (accessed 27 Sept 2013)

2. Don't miss the final IAS Digital Humanities Masterclasses for 2013!
Reading on/and Digital Platforms: A Digital Humanities Research Seminar with Dr Tully Barnett, Research Fellow, Creative Arts, Flinders University (21 Oct)
RSVP today!

Your chance to engage in debates surrounding digital texts.
 "Sven Birkerts reminds us that the human brain has been shaped by print and by the level of attention required for the long form of the book, and he argues that to do away with the book is to lose our humanity. Katherine Hayles tells us that other forms of reading can bring on dynamic transformations in cognition that do not need to be feared but can be embraced as complementary."

3. Rails Girls is coming to Perth! November 15 & 16.
Women are vastly under-represented in computer science and programming. Rails Girls aims to combat this by providing tools and a community for women to understand technology and to build their ideas - and it's coming to Perth! If you'd like to learn what it takes to build a simple web app, don't miss this free two-day workshop for women who want to learn to code. Beginners welcome. Applications are open until October 28th. I've signed up and I think you should too.

4. The call for papers for the DHA 2014 closes on Monday 30 September.
You still have a couple of days to submit an abstract for DHA2014! For those new to DH, the conference, which will be held in Perth, offers a fantastic opportunity to become more directly involved in this research area.


Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The call for papers for Digital Humanities Australasia 2014 is now open!

The University of Western Australia is proud to be hosting the 2014 Digital Humanities Australasia Conference.

The call for papers is now open!

Abstracts must be submitted by 14 September 2013. Explore conference themes and find out more about this exciting event.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Why should digital humanists attend #GovHack?




GovHack is a 48 hour national hackathon where teams compete to create mashups, visualisations and apps using government data.

It was a fantastic event and an amazing opportunity to put digital humanities into practice. I am very keen to register some UWA teams in 2014!

Our team created Pixtory - an iPhone app that allows users to uncover the hidden history around them. Pixtory collects and exposes geo-tagged historic photos from the State Library of WA's photographic archive. The result is an immersive experience that facilitates meaningful encounters with Perth's history and heritage.

We were incredibly proud to win the 'Spirit of GovHack' Award for the Perth event - a prize awarded to the team that demonstrated what GovHack is all about.

Vote for Pixtory in the GovHack People's Choice Awards!
You can vote up until Wednesday night (5th June 2013). All you need to do is register on the site, then log on, visit our team page and vote using the flames.
 

 Cross post from my blog (www.historypunk.com).

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

How is technology changing the way we tell stories? Next meeting: Friday 7 June, 2-3pm.

Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion
"Not long ago we were spectators, passive consumers of mass media. Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. What we're witnessing is the emergence of a new form of narrative that’s native to the Internet. Told through many media at once in a nonlinear fashion, these new narratives en­courage us not merely to watch but to participate, often engaging us in the same way that games do."  - Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion (2011)
How can researchers harness digital storytelling platforms to engage audiences, communicate new knowledge and promote social change? Can opportunities for co-creation empower communities to tell their own stories?

At our next meeting, Paul Houghton, Digital Strategist at Emergent Form, will lead a discussion on digital storytelling and provide an overview of several projects he has been working on with his team.

The session will run between 2-3pm in Arts 1.33 on Friday 7 June.

In preparation for the session, please take some time to explore the websites below:

You might also like to read:
Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the Way We tell Stories, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2011.


Sunday, May 26, 2013

What is linked open data and what does it do?

"It's a powerful tool for connecting previously unconnected resources and stories”
Out of the Trenches : A Linked Open Data Project

"We are familiar with traditional narratives. The web – especially the semantic web – offers something else. It is a work in progress, not fully formed, but that only makes it more exciting to explore."
Mosman Library (NSW): Doing our Bit 1914-1918, Local History Project




I've been trawling through historical datasets today in preparation for GovHack next weekend and my mind is reeling with possibilities. Or perhaps it is just reeling! Thinking about history through data is a new experience for me. It's a brand new way to engage with historical sources and I'm excited.

I'm a GovHack newbie so I've been spending my Sunday doing a bit of research to get a better idea of what is possible and came across a marvelous case study of linked/open data (above). It's a huge project of course - far outside the remit of a 48-hour hackathon - but it really highlights the power and potential of data to reveal new insights about the past. If you're interested in the idea of a semantic web, you can check out a summary of a session on linked data and meta-data that Digital Antipodes ran last year, hosted by UWA's own Toby Burrows.


The Out of the Trenches project aims to optimise WW1 digital historic records by allowing computers to understand complex relationships between data.


Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Join a conversation about Technology, Neoliberalism and Higher Education next Fri 17 May

Our next meeting is on Friday 17 May between 2-3pm (Arts1.33).

Join us for a discussion on digital humanities in the context of academic neoliberalisation.

To what extent does DH pose an oppositional force to neoliberalism and the corporatisation of the academy? To what extent is it complicit?  How might different DH projects differently operate in these political contexts, and with what implications? Are these even the right questions to ask?

Huge thanks to UWA historian, Ethan Blue, who suggested readings and provocations for discussion.

Readings for next week:

Monday, May 6, 2013

UWA Humanities/Computer Science "Meet and Greet" - 11am, Friday 17 May.

When: Friday 17th May 2013, 11:00am – 12:00pm
Where: Computer Science & Software Engineering, Seminar Room 1.24
Light lunch provided. RSVP essential.

UWA historian Ethan Blue and CSSE researchers Rachel Cordell-Oliver and Yvette Harrap are leading an initiative to bring together academics from humanities/computer science to discuss possible collaborations...

"Like a handful of people in the Arts Faculty, I have been looking into the possibilities of work in the digital humanities. Yet because I lack the required computer science and programming skills, I contacted some of the good folks across campus in Computer Science and Software Engineering to gauge their interest in potential collaboration.  As it turns out, a number of the folks over there are interested in joining forces, too.

With that in mind, and with CSSE's Professor Rachel Cordell-Oliver and Yvette Harrap, we’ve arranged an informal “meet and greet” for people from Arts and from Computer Science at 11:00 AM, 17 May, in Computer Science and Software Engineering Seminar Room 1.24.

If you are interested in digital humanities and have a project in mind, please come along.  We’ll go around the table to introduce ourselves and briefly explain our projects, in hopes of finding others with related interests and complementary skills.  We will have lunch afterwards to continue the conversation, courtesy of our colleagues in computer science."


Researchers are invited to give a short (5 minute) overview of their research interests related to digital humanities. 

RSVP to Yvette Harrap at yvette.harrap@uwa.edu.au by Tuesday May 14th.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

How is technology changing the way humans think?

Our next meeting will be held on Friday 3 May from 2-3pm (Arts 1.33) and we'll be discussing how technology is changing the way humans think.

We'll be exploring a chapter from an extraordinary text, Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization (1934), which examines the history of 'machines' and their impact on society. The session will be hosted by UWA researcher David Savat (Communication Studies). David has a background in political theory and is interested in the political, economic, and social effects of technology.

Please RSVP for the session to johawkins@gmail.com.
We can then email you PDF copies of the readings below.

Essential reading:
Lewis Mumford, 'Chapter 1: Machines, Utilities and "The Machine"', in Technics and Civilisation, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934, p.3-23.

Supplementary reading:
N. Katherine Hayles, 'Introduction', in How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2012, p.1-18

PS. You can now subscribe to our blog so you'll never miss an update!

Not only does the blog contain meeting details we regularly post local Digital Humanities events and other interesting content. Simply submit your email address via the box on the right hand side of this page.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Exciting news! GovHack is coming to Perth for the first time in 2013

What is GovHack?

"Governments collect and publish enormous amounts of data, but have limited resources to get it into the hands of their citizens in engaging ways. GovHack is an event to draw together people from government, industry, academia and of course, the general public to mashup, reuse, and remix government data."
(Source: GovHack website)

Data sets from 2012 included the National Archives, Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and Geoscience Australia. You can find out more about GovHack Perth here or register your interest.


What is the schedule of events?

  • Friday May 31 - 6pm Kick-off party, Data release
  • Saturday 1 June - Day of Hacking
  • Sunday 2 June - Day of Hacking, Finish with Awards

Want to know what people can build in a weekend? Take a look at the 2012 winners.

Digital Humanities Research Seminar with Harold Short - 23 May

The UWA Institute of Advanced Studies are running a master class with Harold Short, Professor of Humanities Computing at King’s College London. The seminar will run on 23 May between 2pm-4pm. Spaces are limited so sign up today!

Guns in the Garden: Collaboration and contest in digital humanities research

Digital humanities as a field of academic activity is fundamentally inter-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary. This cross-disciplinary character gives rise at best to new questions and new methods, and in many cases require larger teams of researchers than have typically been the norm in arts and humanities research. It follows that successful projects require new and increasingly sophisticated forms of collaboration, and many projects across the international digital humanities world demonstrate both the challenges and potential benefits of this. 

Find out more.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Data visualisation in the humanities II (The sequel)

The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project.
If you missed our session on data visualisation at iVEC on Fri 22 March - you'll be pleased to know that next week's meeting will be a follow-up.

We'll be discussing some of the big issues that were raised including representing ambiguity/ uncertainty and epistemological assumptions.

Find out why Johanna Drucker has described data visualisation as an 'intellectual Trojan horse'!

The next session will run on Friday 12 April, between 2.00pm-3.30pm. The iVEC team have generously offered up their meeting room while our usual meeting room is being renovated. The iVEC facility is located on the ground floor of the Physics building (entrance opposite the Reid Library or through the main Physics foyer).

As usual, we will be discussing an article and a case study. Since we explored data visualisation in the context of history last time, we decided to explore an example from literature next week.

Recommended reading:
Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display”, Digital Humanities Quarterly,Volume 5, Number 1, 2011.

Case study:  The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project
Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project and the STN Database, Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 3 Summer 2012.
Explore the tool here: http://chop.leeds.ac.uk/stn/

See you then!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Dipping a Toe into the Digital Humanities (video series)

This is brilliant. A series of videos have just been put online from Dipping a Toe into the Digital Humanities, a one-day introductory symposium presented by the Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention at Deakin University on 19 October 2012.

Speakers including Tim Sherratt (@wragge) and Ingrid Mason (@1n9r1d) profiled some of the biggest digital humanities projects happening in Australia right now. I can't wait to watch a couple of these over Easter.


Enjoyed the first vid? Watch them all here.


"Digital Humanities describes research, teaching and knowledge realisation at the intersection of computing and the humanities, social sciences, creative and performing arts. It is broadly interdisciplinary and encompasses a wide variety of emerging practices, ranging from curating digital research collections, developing new tools for exploring archives to visualising information from large data sets."  Dipping a Toe into the Digital Humanities

Monday, March 18, 2013

Watch keynote presentations from Digital Humanities Australasia 2012 (video)



You can now watch the keynote presentations from the 'Digital Humanities Australasia 2012 Conference: Building, Mapping, Connecting'.

  • Julia Flanders on 'Rethinking Collections'
  • Alan Liu on 'Close, Distant, and Unexpected Reading'
  • Peter Robinson, Harold Short and John Unsworth discuss 'Big Digital Humanities' in a keynote Panel session.
Want more detailed information on keynote speakers and their topics? Take a look at the conference website.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Monday, March 11, 2013

Are you interested in using data to tell compelling visual stories?

Source: The Spatial History Project
Don't miss our next reading group session at 2-3pm on Friday 22 March where we will be discussing data visualisation.

Please note we have changed the venue for this session.
We will be meeting at the UWA iVEC facility which is located on the ground floor of the Physics building (entrance opposite the Reid Library or through the main Physics foyer). The iVEC team are supercomputing specialists who provide a range of support services for UWA researchers. We've booked out the conference room and also their impressive visualisation laboratory. We'll combine a discussion of the readings (below) with a tour of iVEC and a demo of vis tools and technologies by Paul Bourke (Director, iVEC@UWA).

The iVEC visualisation laboratory at UWA

Numbers are limited so please RSVP to johawkins@gmail.com. The session is scheduled for 2-3pm but I have booked the facilities until 4pm as I know our discussions tend to run over.


What you need to know:

Not only are researchers in the humanities developing new tools and methodologies to analyse large, complex datasets - they are developing innovative ways to communicate their findings.

The session will be hosted by UWA historian, Ethan Blue, who is developing a concept for a data visualisation project based on his work on American deportation networks in early twentieth century. He's interested in the ways in which historians are using geospacial visualisations to map interconnections, networks, movement, and change. The session will focus on historical research but the topic is relevant to a broad range of disciplines.

Recommended readings:

Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzk, Writing History in the Digital Age, 2012.
Part 1: Re-Visioning Historical Writing
Part 5: See What I Mean? Visual, Spatial, and Game-based History

You may also like to read Zephyr Frank's 'Layers, Flows And Intersections: Jeronymo José De Mello And Artisan Life In Rio De Janeiro, 1840s-1880' which was published in Journal of Social History (2007). Frank used datasets and maps to write a social history of Rio de Janeiro's artisans.

You can view a series of Frank's connected creative visualisations on the Stanford University's Spatial History Project website.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

[Cross Post] Digital Manuscript Studies – Curriculum Development Week One


The Conservation of the Codex Alexandrinus, courtesy of the British Library Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Blog
Hello Digital Antipodeans,

Today I would like to share a post with you from my blog Fluid Imaginings about a unit I am developing, to be run next year, on the topic of Digital Manuscript Studies. The unit is for our Masters in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at our University of Western Australia Centre of the same name. I’ve decided to start blogging about the process, some of the sources that I have discovered, any problems or insights I encounter, and those places that I have found good help and resources. Since the name of the game for our group is the sharing and discussion of Digital Humanities content and ideas, I hope that this is of interest.

I would very much welcome any and all input from anyone reading this blog, so please chime in if you think you have some advice, or that I am making a mistake somewhere. This is my first large scale curriculum development project, and I want to learn in a way that helps others as much as myself.
The name of the game this week is introduction. What readings and activities best prepare students for the world of digital manuscript studies while simultaneously introducing some of the core concepts of digital humanities in general? Perhaps beginning with my four draft outcomes is the best option:
By the end of the unit, students should be able to:
  1. Critically engage with the problems, possibilities, and methodologies of manuscript studies in an age of digital content.
  2. Analyse different resources for manuscript studies (resources, tools for researchers, tools for students), the manner in which they are presented and the manner in which they can be used and manipulated.
  3. Critique the strengths and weaknesses of diverse digital manuscripts and resources.
  4. Use resources and tools to conduct original research individually and in a group, and identify the need for new approaches based on this research.
As you can see, these outcomes are wholly manuscript studies based (the goal is to teach students how to use sources confidentlyand critically in a digital environment) and the digital humanities content is inflected rather than self-evident. My question for this week is how to teach both general DH literacy and introduce students to the manuscript as digital entity without being too mired in the ‘yack’ at the expense of the ‘hack’ as scholars are fond of saying.
I will keep you posted as the syllabus emerges. Once again, please feel free to comment on this or any future blog post, or comment on an Academia.edu question i’ve asked.

Take Care,
James Smith

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

DH Show and Tell - Friday 1 March, 4-5pm

We're holding our first DH reading group session for 2013 next Friday 1 March at 4pm.
  • When: 4pm-5pm
  • Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

Here are three things you need to know:


1. It's a DH show and tell.

We haven't seen each other for a while so our first session will be a "Show and Tell". Instead of a reading, you are welcome to share a DH project that has impressed you recently (the 2012 DH Awards nominations list is a great resource to look at), a current project you are working on, a concept for a future project, or an area you would like to learn more about in 2013. James Smith will be joining us (in digital form) via video link from London. He is about to start work on a DH curriculum development project and is also keen to share a concept for a new postdoc project with us.

2. We'll be planning for 2013.

We'll conclude the session by discussing the best way to run the reading group in 2013. Shall we each each 'host' a meeting in 2013 - choosing an article and leading the discussion? I think this would encourage stronger engagement with topics and would allow for a more diverse range of interests to be explored. Interspersed throughout reading sessions we would continue hosting guest speakers and site visits where possible. We are also keen to take advantage of the video link technology in our meeting room to host some international speakers in 2013. We shall also confirm meeting time and date.

3. How we're going to use our blog.

We've created this space to can share links and articles for each week's topic and record interesting outcomes from our discussions. The blog includes summaries of each meeting of 2012 so you can go back and review readings and resources. It's your blog and we would love your contributions. If you would like admin access to write blog posts just send Colin Yeo or Jo Hawkins an email.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Voting for the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards is now open!

Interested in exploring some of the best publications, tools and projects that the field of digital humanities has to offer? Nominations for the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards have just been announced. Make sure you place your vote.

 You've only got a few weeks! Voting closes at midnight (GMT) on Sunday 17 February 2013.
Digital Humanities Awards are a new set of annual awards given in recognition of talent and expertise in the digital humanities community and are nominated and voted for entirely by the public.  These awards are intended to help put interesting DH resources in the spotlight and engage DH users (and general public) in the  work of the community.

2012 in Review: Big ideas in DH (Week 6)

We've come a long way baby.
When: Friday 2 November 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

"Over the last couple of years, it has become increasingly clear that the digital humanities is associated with a visionary and forward-looking sentiment and that the field has come to constitute a site for far-reaching discussions about the future of the field itself as well as the humanities at large." - Patrik Svensson

The theme of the final session was 'Big ideas in Digital Humanities'. Brett Hirsch and Toby Burrows shared insights into the future of digital humanities at UWA and we asked attendees to contribute their own 'big ideas':
  • What opportunities are you most excited about and where do you think they could lead the humanities? 
  • How should digital humanists best contribute to discussions regarding the future of the humanities in Australian universities? 
  • Does the future contain a digital utopia or will humanists face unforeseen challenges?

The reading reflected our theme of 'Big Ideas'.
Patrik Svensson, 'Envisioning the Digital Humanities', Digital Humanities Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2012.


2012 in Review: MOOCs - optimism or apocalypse? (Week 5)

When: Friday 26 October 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

It seems like everyone's talking about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)! You may have heard that UWA will be offering three free online courses in 2013.  But just what is a MOOC and what impact might they have on higher education? We met to discuss and cut through the hype.

There has been so much written about MOOCs lately it was hard to know where to start but The Conversation's recent series 'The Future of Higher Education'  was a great place to begin. We discussed a range of viewpoints surrounding the impact of online learning on Australian universities.

Are MOOCs cause for optimism or apocalypse?

What is the potential impact on pedagogy?

How can universities address structural constraints, such as regulatory environments and cultural barriers to change?

And what specific disciplinary challenges might academics in the humanities face?

2012 in Review: “Universities in 2020 - will we need them? MOOCs and their impact” (Week 5)

Universities in 2020 - will we need them?  
An Inquiring Minds Lecture by Associate Professor David Glance
Tuesday 23 Oct October 2012
"The availability of free online university courses from the world’s most prestigious institutions threatens to bring about radical change in the way the world accesses education. The first course offered by Stanford University in this way attracted 160,000 students. For the first time, anyone with an internet connection in any part of the world can take a university course and receive a credit for it. With this access comes the possibility of millions of people who could only dream of taking courses at Harvard or MIT being able further their education and with it the range of possibilities in their lives."

2012 in Review: Linked data & metadata (Week 4)

Linked data in action - the Civil War Data 150 Project
Friday 19 October 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

According to Mashable, the world’s information is doubling every two years. How does this challenge us as researchers? As well as creating new knowledge, do we have a responsibility to help make sense of this river of information by curating and creating connections?

Toby Burrows, manager of eResearch Support at UWA, spoke to us about meta data (data about data) and linked data – which provide ways for us to connect information, data and knowledge in a rapidly expanding digital universe.

It was a great chance to learn more about UWA's eResearch Support and Digital Developments Unit. Based in the Reid Library, Toby's team offer training and advice on research data management, advice on open access publishing, digitising collections and manage the UWA's Research Repository - among other things!

Toby suggested some links for those of us who wanted to learn more:

2012 in Review: More DH case studies (Week 3)

When: Friday 12 October 2012, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

We continued to share experiences and examined two additional case studies from UWA.

Patricia Alessi (@Patricia_Alessi) outlined how she is creating repertoire lists of 17th century English opera singers/actresses using DH resources such as the Restoration Theatre Song Archive and explained how this process had inspired ideas for a future DH project.

Robin Adamson, a UWA humanities computing pioneer, explained how she used computers in her analysis of Albert Camus’ L'Étranger in 1966. Robin was one of the first people at UWA to practice digital humanities and she brought in some amazing artifacts associated with the project.

We also spoke about the Popular Romance Project (@PopularRomance) - a fantastic DH study that explores the "the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance" - discussing Jack Elliott's recent blog post: "Around the World". Jack is a PhD student at the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing (University of Newcastle) and is using a statistics program called 'Breiman and Cutler’s Random Forests' to examine regional differences between romance novels originating from the Antipodes, Europe and North America (among other things).

2012 in Review: DH projects @ UWA (Week 2)

The Digital Renaissance Editions
When: Friday 5 October, 2.30pm-3.30pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

We examined some outstanding DH projects from UWA - using case studies to bring theory & application to life.

Brett Hirsch shared insights into his Digital Renaissance Editions project and computational stylistics work he is conducting to identify patterns and trends in early English drama.

Rebecca Banks spoke about the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East Project (@APAAME).


See APAAME in action...
We also selected two (short) readings to discuss:

William G. Thomas, 'What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities', Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No.1, Winter 2011.

Andrew Prescott , 'An Electric Current of the Imagination: What the Digital Humanities Are and What They Might Become', Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 2012.

2012 in Review: Demystifying DH (Week 1)

When: Tuesday 18 September, 1pm – 1.45pm
Where: Arts 1.33 / CHE Seminar Room

We hosted a short lunchtime Q&A session, discussing how the field of Digital Humanities is defined, why it’s growing so rapidly, how it offers new opportunities to organise, analyse and communicate research - and why you don’t need to be a computer programmer to take part in it.

James Smith delivered a lively 20-minute presentation, which was followed by a Q&A session where attendees could voice questions, concerns and ideas for future sessions.

Suggested reading:
Charles Ess argues that the use of computing technologies in the humanities isn't so new after all.
Charles Ess, '"Revolution? What Revolution?" Successes and Limits of Computing Technologies in Philosophy and Religion', in (eds) Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth, A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004.