TY  -  JOUR
TI  -  The role of digital humanities in an interdisciplinary research project
  AU -Jane Winters
AU -Anna-Maria Sichani
PY  -  2023
VL  - Congruence Engine
IS  - Autumn 2022
KW - collaboration
KW - data
KW - digital humanities
KW - Interdisciplinarity
KW - open knowledge

AB - This discussion paper will reflect on the contribution of digital humanities (DH) to a complex interdisciplinary project like the Congruence Engine. It begins by considering how DH has developed within the larger history of interdisciplinarity in the humanities, crossing boundaries within and between disciplines and sectors, and facilitating collaboration and knowledge exchange. It discusses the growth of large-scale digital projects in the humanities, shaped by the nature and scope of the data increasingly available to humanities researchers, by the new kinds of research questions that can be asked, but also by changes in broader funding and policy landscapes. It considers three recent projects which exemplify the value of DH in interdisciplinary contexts, before reflecting on how DH methods and approaches have influenced the shape of the Congruence Engine. It situates the practices of the Congruence Engine in the wider context of knowledge exchange, focusing in particular on the concept of ‘trading zones’, and draws out the complementarity between the bridging or translational role of DH and the systemic action research framing of the project. Finally, it highlights the value of responsible openness not just in relation to published research outputs but to research practice and process.

N1 - To give a sense of the scale at which humanities researchers may find themselves working, at the time of writing, the British Newspapers Archive makes available almost sixty million digitised pages, while the UK Web Archive is adding 80-70 TB of data each year. The former consists of digital images and searchable OCRed text; the latter of born-digital text and other media, including sound and moving image.
N1 - Winters was Principal Investigator for the Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities (BUDDAH) project, which ran from 2014–15 (Arts and Humanities Research Council, AH/L009854/1); the impresso project is led by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the University of Zurich and the University of Luxembourg; Professor Ruth Ahnert is Principal Investigator of the Living with Machines project.
PB - The Science Museum Group
 
SN -  2054-5770
LA -  eng
DO -  10.15180/221812
UR -  https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/the-role-of-digital-humanities-in-an-interdisciplinary-research-project/
T2 -  Science Museum Group Journal