‘Digital technologies: help or hindrance for the humanities?’
Colloquium strands
The inter-relationship of digital technologies and humanities research will be examined from three perspectives and a range of questions will be addressed within each of these areas:
Strand 1: The user perspective:
Are digital humanities research projects engaging with (and for) users?
- Who are the users of digital humanities technologies, and how much of an overlap is there with the humanities more generally?
- Do the digital humanities take enough notice of user-engagement?
- How legitimate is the digital humanities’ claim to ‘democratise’ academia, and how desirable is that anyway?
Strand 2: The humanities perspective:
What are the implications of humanities research practices for the development of digital technologies?
- What can humanities academics offer to those working with digital technologies (in terms of approach, kinds of question, use to which they put the data, etc)?
- What kinds of questions should digital humanities research be asking? (and, indeed, proponents of digital technologies more broadly?)
- To what extent can/should more traditional text-based (in its widest sense, including visual and aural culture) research practice be open to the digital revolution? And what is at stake in that change?
- How do non-humanities participants (especially specialists in digital technology) perceive the arts and humanities?
- What are the failings or shortcomings of DH research in comparison to traditional text-based research?
Strand 3: The technology perspective:
How are digital technologies changing the type and process of humanities research?
- What is gained and what is lost by the use of digital resources?
- What research can now get done by virtue of the growth of on-line resources, and what research won’t get done, with what consequences?
- Who gets power over what: who makes the decisions and what are the processes?
