Tracing the Development of Digital Humanities in Australia

Dr Neville Buch ABN: 86703686642, 2024

The third and final essay in the series on the emerging field of Cognition History (and Cognition Sociology). With a postscript to follow. This final essay discusses the concept of wilful ignorance, the existential crisis of the humanities, the anti-intellectualism thesis, and the popular outright rejection of sociology discipline. The essay ends with a call for solutions in revaluating digital humanities projects. A summary of Dr Buch’s conclusions of the Cognition Histories series is provided.

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 2023

The incorporation of the humanities into digital transformation processes resulted in the emergence of a new research field called digital humanities. This new field has its origin in the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. From the research point of view, through the analysis of the scientific production of the main academic databases, we provide here an overview of the international panorama of digital humanities, looking at the main countries, institutions, areas of knowledge and leading topics in this discipline.

2011

Digital Humanities is currently undergoing a reconfiguration at McGill. The Digital Humanities Initiative is bringing together digital humanists from across a number of faculties for the first time. Yet it is not clear what Digital Humanities actual are: this central problem arises from the vast potential the digital age presents for humanities scholarship. Key to the dilemma is whether Digital Humanities itself is something distinct from analog humanities, or whether it is merely the reconfiguration of humanities itself using digital technologies and media. At the same time, for many Digital Humanities also offers important opportunities for reconsidering the place of the humanities within society itself. Not only are digital technologies, media, and social models reconfiguring public life, they are also offering new avenues for intellectual engagement and the ways in which humanistic studies as well as artistic creation enters into, and becomes active in, the public realm. Moving ...

The use of computers to analyze research data in arts and humanities disciplines such as literature and history dates back to the 1940s. The digital humanities also referred to as humanities computing, maybe a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and therefore the disciplines of the humanities. It is a study that is methodological naturally and interdisciplinary in scope. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of data in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines during which they're used, and what these disciplines need to contribute to our knowledge of computing. This paper elaborates the concept of Digital Humanities, its origin and development. Introduction:

International Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science

Regardless of whether one supports Digital Humanities as a discipline in its own, ‘traditional' Humanities are transforming with the incorporation of computational approaches. In this short position paper, we outline ten challenges that we consider important and propose to kick-off an in-depth dialog for the future shaping of Digital Humanities, without prejudices and preconceptions. The presentation of the challenges situates them with respect to trends and evolutionary developments in society and technology, and some first comments are being made in kicking-off the dialog for the shaping of the future.

2015

Funding for the production of this publication has been provided by the Australian Government through the Department of Education and Training. The views expressed in this publication to not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Education and Training.

2014

This is an exhilarating time for the digital humanities. There’s an infectious energy driving the development of new tools and new types of research, and a passion for collaboration and reaching across disciplinary boundaries. Digital humanities centers are multiplying at institutions around the world, digital projects are making their way into classrooms, and dedicated funding bodies, like the NEH Office of Digital Humanities, are lending their support to innovative work. Underlying this momentum, however, there’s also a sense of urgency. The digital humanities is, as yet, only partially constituted as a field, and strives for greater recognition within the larger academic ecosystem. This energy and this urgency are both evident throughout Digital_Humanities, a concise volume that aims to serve as a manifesto for the movement.

In this article I try to articulate a critical assessment of the current geopolitical asset of Digital Humanities. This critique is based on one hand on data about the composition of government organs, institutions and principal journals of the field, and on the other hand on a general reflection on the cultural, political and linguistic bias of digital standards, protocols and interfaces. These reflections suggest that DH is not only a discipline and an academic discourse dominated materially by an Anglo-American élite and intellectually by a mono-cultural view, but that it lacks a theoretical model for reflecting critically on its own instruments. I conclude proposing to elaborate a different model of DH, based on the concept of knowledge as commons and the cultivation of cultural margins, as opposed to the present obsession with large-scale digitization projects and “archiving fever” that leads to an increase of our dependency on private industry products and, of course, funding.

2021

This is the second discussion paper produced by the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Network in consultation with the wider Digital Humanities (DH) community in the two countries and beyond. It summarises the findings of the second workshop organised by the Network, and offers recommendations based on these findings.