The Faculty of Arts hosts a series of ‘Digital Humanities in Practice’ seminars. Join us to find out more about ongoing digital projects within the OU and beyond, and to engage in debate and critical evaluation.
Please register with Heather Scott (H.Scott@open.ac.uk) before the event.
These seminars are also webcast on the OU intranet http://stadium.open.ac.uk/webcast-ou/ and are available to OU staff after the event as recordings.
‘The CyberBibles project’
19 September 2013
Time: 12.00-2.00pm
Venue: MR 1-2-3 Wilson A, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speaker: Tim Hutchings, (CRESC)
‘The Commodities History Project’
24 October 2013
Time: 12.00-2.00pm
Venue: MR 1-2-3 Wilson A, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speakers: Sandip Hazareesingh (History) and Jon Curry-Machado (Institute of the Americas, UCL)
‘The Listening Experience Database’
28 November 2013
Time: 12.00-2.00pm
Venue: MR 1-2-3 Wilson A, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speakers: David Rowland and Helen Barlow (Music)
4 July 2013: Corpus Linguistics as Distant Reading?
Time: 12.00-2.00pm
Venue: Arts Music Studio, Perry D, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Speakers: Ann Hewings and Daniel Allington (Centre for Language and Communication, The Open University)
By the mid 1980s, corpus linguistics had been successfully and relatively uncontroversially established as a sub-discipline of linguistics. In this presentation, we will outline the development of corpus linguistics and its relevance to a number of fields of enquiry including forensic linguistics, relating this development to the contrasting disciplinary history of digital research methods within the humanities. We will also discuss the very real differences that exist between corpus-based and non-corpus-based approaches to linguistics, and how these can be resolved in research and teaching. The presentation will conclude with demonstration of free web-based tools which people can easily access and experiment with.
‘Going Digital final conference: Future Digital’
31 July 2013, 10 am-4pm
Venue: The Open University in London, 1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden
British Library Labs competition presentation
Date: Friday 07 June 2013, 12.00pm-2.00pm
Location: CMR01, The Open University
Mahendra Mahey, British Library Labs Project Manager, will be at The Open University, Walton Hall on 7 June to speak about the British Library Labs competition.
BL Labs are calling all scholars, explorers, trailblazers and software developers who want you to propose an innovative and transformative project using the British Library's digital collections. Successful applicants will work with the Labs team to realise their project and could win a prize of up to £3,000.
From the digitisation of thousands of books, newspapers and manuscripts, the curation of UK websites, bird sounds or location data for maps, over the last two decades the British Library has been faithfully amassing a vast and wide-ranging number of digital collections for the nation. What remains elusive, however, is understanding what researchers need in place in order to unlock the potential for new discoveries within these fascinating and diverse sets of digital content.
Join Mahendra to learn more about the competition and for a chance to discuss the project, the competition, and the kinds of digital collections and data that are being made available to work with Labs.
For more information , please see http://labs.bl.uk/Competition+2013
Please email Emily Thornett (emily.thornett@open.ac.uk) to book a place or set up a Skype connection.
Digital Collections in the Humanities
Date: 25 April 2013
Time: 11.00am-1.00pm
Venue: Arts Music Studio, Perry D, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speaker: Prof. Lorna Hughes, (National Library of Wales and University of Wales)
Digitisation initiatives in libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions have created a 'deluge' of data in the humanities that has transformed the information landscape and the way it is navigated for research and teaching. The use of digital collections for scholarship – using ICT-based tools and methods – has been the basis of transformative and innovative research across the disciplines, allowing enhanced access to materials, and supporting new modes of collaboration and communication. This presentation discussed the research programme in digital collections at the National Library of Wales. This is developing an evidence base for the use, value and impact of the digital collections of Wales, and investigating the relationship between impact and the long terms sustainability of digital collections.
Data Visualisation for Humanities Researchers
Date: 19 February 2013
Time: 12.00pm-2.00pm
Venue: Arts Music Studio, Perry D, Milton Keynes, The Open University
This seminar offers a survey of major online humanities datasets and some of the tools available for visualising them. Examples will be drawn from externally-funded projects such as Hestia, Google Ancient Places and Pelagios.
Speakers:
Dr Elton Barker (Classics Department, The Open University, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Freie Universität Berlin)
Ms Mia Ridge (PhD student, The Open University, and Chair of the Museum Computer Group UK)
‘Digital Collections and the First World War’
Date: 24 January 2013
Time: 12.00pm-2.00pm
Venue: Arts Music Studio, Perry D
Join us to explore new ways of researching the First World War that are being developed through Digital Humanities methodologies, such as enhanced resource discovery and usability, crowdsourcing and community building.
Speakers:
Adrian Stevenson (Mimas, University of Manchester): “The WW1 Discovery Project”
Jerry Jenkins (British Library): “'Europeana Collections 1914-1918 and the British Library”
Alun Edwards (Oxford University): “Europeana 1914-1918: Crowdsourcing collections for teaching and research”
A Framework for Supporting the Digital Humanities
Date: 29 November 2012
Time: 12.00pm-2.00pm
Venue: Meeting room 1-2-3, Wilson A, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speaker:
Erin Snyder, Digital Humanities Manager, Nottingham University
Digital humanities is growing in the UK. In some cases, this is evident in the formation of new centres and departments dedicated to the study of DH. However, many institutions are doing very fine digital work throughout many departments, while others may not have the resources for a DH centre. Using the Digital.Humanities@Oxford project as a case study, and touching on the model of the University of Nottingham, this seminar presents practical steps that can be taken toward the development of a decentralized institutional infrastructure to support digital humanities work.
Decentralized DH provides an opportunity to engage a wide community of practitioners, particularly as this form of DH is often broadly multi-disciplinary. In this way, a digital discipline can make use of digital resources to compensate for physical dispersal, and to promote new work that might otherwise have been impossible.
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording: A Framework for Supporting the Digital Humanities.
Digital History: Practice and Challenges
Thursday 25 October 2012, 1.30pm-3.30pm
Central Meeting Room 01, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speakers:
Dr Amanda Goodrich, The Open University: “Digital History and Linguistic Change”
This paper considers the advantages and pitfalls for historians using digital resources for research. It focuses on using digital resources for quantitative research into linguistic change in the period 1700-1850 and incorporates the use of digital tools such as Google Ngram and Bookworm. How such digital resources affect historical research methodologies and how they might influence the teaching of students are also explored.
Claudia Favero, The Open University: “Digital Historians: perspectives and approaches in research and teaching.”
Who are the "digital historians" and what do they do? This research compares and contrasts the situation in the UK and Italy to consider how tradition and innovation compete to determine the present and future of the epistemology and modus operandi of the discipline.
The Scholarly Monograph in the Age of Open Access
Thursday 27 September 2012, 12.00pm – 2.00pm
Meeting Rooms 1, 2, 3, Wilson A Ground Floor, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Speakers: Caren Milloy, JISC-OAPEN, Rupert Gatti, Open Book Publishers
Open Access publishing is an area of growing interest in the academic community, especially after the publication of the Finch report and the RCUK’s decision to impose an Open Access mandate on all outputs deriving from public funds. However, most of the discussion so far has been dominated by the concerns of the Sciences and has concentrated on journal articles. What is the future, in this new context, of the scholarly monograph, which is of central importance in the Humanities? Caren Milloy of JISC will discuss the findings of the OAPEN project on Humanities publishing, while Rupert Gatti will outline his experience as a publisher of open access monographs.
Digital histories of environmental change: Pathfinding in the BBC archive
Wednesday 27 June 2012, 12pm-1.30pm
Library Presentation Room
Joe Smith (Geography), Kim Hammond, George Revill (Geography) and Zdenek Zdrahal (KMi)
Digital media generate new practices and responsibilities, and open up new opportunities for scholars in terms of research, teaching and public engagement. In this seminar an interdisciplinary team ‘think in public’ about their concerns about and ambitions for working with a substantial body of broadcast content relating to environmental issues, amounting to fifty hours of BBC television and radio, from the late 1950s to the present. Broadcast archive content will become increasingly available, and represents a very substantial extension of the material available on a range of topics. The Open University and BBC are collaborating on piloting approaches to working with this data. In the seminar we will discuss how this environment-related case study allows us to consider: extensions and revisions of existing contemporary histories; the technical tools available to, or required for, researchers, teachers and learners and the implications of digital tools and resources for public engagement with these materials. We also reflect on some wider questions about what it means to practice digital scholarship by opening up access to media archives in relation to contentious issues such as environmental change.
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording: Digital histories of environmental change: Pathfinding in the BBC archive.
Transforming Scholarly Communications: Open Access Journals in the Humanities
Thursday 31 May 2012, 12.00pm - 1.30pm
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1,2,3
Open Access publishing is an area of growing interest in the academic community. This seminar brings together scholars, librarians and publishers to discuss how Open Access publishing, especially in the area of journals, can contribute to the transformation of scholarly communications in the Humanities.
Speakers:
Nicola Dowson and Chris Biggs, Library ORO Team, 'Open access: The OU Library perspective'
Trevor Fear and Jessica Hughes, Classical Studies Department, Open University, ‘Editors' perspectives: New Voices in Classical Reception Studies and Practitioners' Voices in Classical Reception Studies’
Paul Harwood, JISC Collections, ‘Still Open for business?' Scholarly publishers and OA in the humanities’
Roundtable discussion including Louise Dutnell, Oxford University Press.
Thursday 26 April 2012, 12pm-1.30pm
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1,2,3
Discover the range of projects being developed in the Faculty of Arts, and reflect on how the Digital Humanities are enabling new modes of research in the humanities.
Speakers:
Shafquat Towheed and Edmund King: The Reading Experience Database
Florian Stadtler: Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections
Sandip Hazareesingh: The Commodities of Empire Project
Leon Wainwright: The Open Arts Journal.
Tuesday 27 March 2012, 12 noon -2pm
Ambient Lab, Jennie Lee Building
Martin Weller (Institute of Educational Technology) - Digital Scholarship: 10 lessons in 10 videos
Jan Parker (Institute of Educational Technology) - Digital Literacies in the Humanities
Liz Fitzgerald (Institute of Educational Technology) - The Pelagios project experience
Thursday 26 January 2012
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
Luciano Floridi (University of Hertforshire)
Enveloping the World: Understanding the Constraining Success of Smart Technologies
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording
Tuesday 13 December 2011
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
Prof Brian Bocking (University College Cork)
Piecing Together: Captain Daylight, the Buddhist Bishop of Rangoon, and collaborative digital research
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording
Key Issues in Digital Humanities
13 October 2011
A workshop discussion introduced by Lorna Hardwick (Arts), Allan Jones (Maths, Computing and Technology), Jan Parker (Institute of Education Technology) and Mia Ridge (Arts, Digital Humanities research student) further exploring key themes discussed in the July colloquium.
Digital Humanities Colloquium: ‘Digital technologies: help or hindrance for the humanities?’
Friday 8th July 2011, The Open University
The Faculty of Arts hosted a one day colloquium to explore key strategic issues in the practice of digital humanities.
Programme and abstracts are available here.
The proceedings in CMR11 are also available as a video recording (OU staff only).
Monday 21st March 2011 12-3pm
Central Meeting Room 11
Professor Gill Perry, Art History, The Open University Faculty of Arts and Fouad Zablith, KMi on The Open Arts Archive
Dr. Graeme Earl, Senior Lecturer in Archaelogy, University of Southampton 'Reflections on computing and archaeological fieldwork: the AHRC Portus Project'
Wednesday 23rd February 2011
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
Professor Trevor Herbert, Music Dept, The Open University Faculty of Arts
‘Databases and digital images in music history research: some case studies’
Dr Claire Warwick, Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
'No field of dreams: designing digital resources for humanities users'
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording.
November 22nd 2010
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
Robert Shoemaker, Professor of Eighteenth-Century British History, University of Sheffield
'Connected Histories and Data Mining: New Tools for the Digital Humanities'
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording.
Thursday 14th October 2010 12 - 3.00pm
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
Nigel Warburton, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University
'What I learnt at Googleplex'
Dr. Ian Gregory, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, Lancaster University
'Space and place, texts and images: Using Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities.'
This seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording.
Following on from the Social Media Launch event, Arts Faculty staff were invited to attend three Social Media Workshops. These are informal drop-in sessions, each focusing on a particular social media tool. Please bring your lap-top if you have one.
Thursday June 10th, 2010 - Delicious social bookmarking and online reference management
Monday July 12th, 2010– Twitter microblogging and academic networking site academia.edu
Thursday September 9th, 2010– subscribing to website and blog updates using RSS feeds and collecting them together using Google Reader
Tuesday 29th June 2010 12 - 3.30pm
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
OU Arts speakers: The challenges of digital
Dr. Sandip Hazareesingh and Dr. Roberto Davini: the Encyclopedia of Global Commodities 1800-2000.
Guest speakers: Preserving and sustaining access to digitised research material
Dr Janet Topp-Fargion, Curator, World and Traditional Music,
The British Library Sound Archive
Dr Rembrandt Duits,
Assistant Curator (Photographic Collection),
Renaissance Art and Material Culture, The Warburg Institute,
University of London
The seminar is available to OU staff as a video recording.
Social Media Sessions: Launch Event
Tuesday 11th May 12 - 2pm
Wilson A Meeting Rooms 1-3
The Faculty of Arts is launching a social media evaluation project at this event. Members of arts staff will talk about their personal experience of social media and of how it has helped them (or not!) in their work. Colleagues from IET will talk about the subsequent sessions, which will enable staff to familiarise themselves with social media tools and encourage evaluation of their academic-related potential.
Tuesday 2nd March 12.00 – 15.00
Arts Meeting Rooms 1-3 (Ground floor Wilson A)
OU Arts speakers: Dr. Rehana Ahmed and Dr. Florian Stadtler: the Making Britain project
Dr Elton Barker (Classical Studies): HESTIA.
Guest speaker: Professor Charlotte Roueché, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, King’s College London.
‘Pursuing digital epigraphy: an intellectual journey and its implications’
This seminar is available online to OU staff.
Wednesday 20th January 12.00 – 15.00
Arts Meeting Rooms 1-3 (Ground floor Wilson A)
Professor Lorna Hardwick, Director of Classical Receptions in Late Twentieth Century Drama and Poetry in English
Dr. Shafquat Towheed, Project Supervisor of The Reading Experience Database
Guest speaker: Arthur Burns, Professor of Modern British History, King’s College London: ‘Opportunities and costs for the archival researcher in a digital world: the case of the Clergy of the Church of England Database’
This seminar is available online to OU staff only.