A student-focussed discussion of the impact of the information revolution on the research humanities with some examples from my own work, including SSHRC and GRAND-DH-funded material. Present at the University of Basel October 13, 2014.

1. “All together now...”
Mobilising the (digital) humanities
in the Information Age
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
@danielPaulOD
Daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca
University of Lethbridge
#grand_dh

2. The future of the humanities
has never looked brighter

3. ● More relevant than ever before
● Larger audiences than ever before
● More and better data than ever before
● Greater access than ever before
● More venues for dissemination than ever before
● More diverse community of researchers and
students than ever before

4. “Brighter than ever” is not our normal narrative

5. ● “There is unquantifiable intellectual reward from the exploration of scholarly
problems and the expansion of every discipline—yes, even the literary ones, and
even if that means doing bat-shit analysis like using the rule of “false elimination”
to determine that Josef K. is simultaneously guilty and not guilty in The Trial.”
Schuman, Rebecca. 2013. “Thesis Hatement.” Slate, April 5.
● Unfortunately, and because of the haste under which they were produced, the first
Horizon 2020 Work Programmes have taken up the new approach only in a very
uneven way. In some, the integration of SSH is nominally mentioned, though not
really substantiated; in a few, substantial steps are made in the right direction;
while others again have been drafted in the plain old way.... This... only adds to the
fear that had already emerged among representatives of the Social Sciences and
Humanities since the first presentations of Horizon 2020 in 2011 that the
“integrative approach” would actually mean that their particular fields of research
would be diminished; and that beneath the nice talk of “integration”, dedicated
programmes for the Social Sciences and Humanities would be expulsed.
Mayer, Katja, Thomas Konig, and Helga Nowotny. 2013. HORIZONS FOR
SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES. Vilnus: Mykolas Romeris University.
● “When we look at the public reputation of the humanities; when we compare the
dilapidated Humanities Cottage on campus with the new $225-million Millennium
Science Complex...; when we look at the academic job market for humanists, we
can't avoid the conclusion that the value of the work we do, and the way we
theorize value, simply isn't valued by very many people.”
Bérubé, Michael. 2013. “The Humanities, Unraveled.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18.

6. So why the disjunct?
Our success is coming outside
the traditional avenues

7. So why the disjunct?
Our success is coming outside
the traditional avenues

8. ● Non-traditional audiences
● Non-traditional venues
● Non-traditional technology
● Non-traditional checks and balances
● Non-traditional collaborations

9. The Digital Humanities

10. An Open Access, Open Source, social web is an
internet that presents Humanists of all stripes with
remarkable opportunities: to engage with far
larger audiences, to work with a far wider variety
of cultural and historical material, and to develop
forms of communication and publication that are
far better suited to the type of research and
teaching we have always done.

11. We are living in the information age, for Pete’s
sake. If humanists can’t make what we do central
in an information age, we never can.
Davidson, Cathy N. 2011. “Strangers on a Train.” Academe, October.

12. But in order reap these opportunities,
we need to retool

13. ● Change the way we train our students
● Change the way (and with whom) we
collaborate
● Change the way we work and how we
communicate

14. ● Scary stuff, because the changes have been
so fast and (in some ways) so fundamental
– Easier to quote than to paraphrase
– Easier to count use than citations
– Easier to reach the public than our scholarly peers
● All changes that have happened within the
career arc of most researchers
– Most changes are < 20 years old
– Many of the most significant about 10 (first Web
2.0 conference)

15. ● This is not simply about technology
– There is no magic DH bullet that changes
Humanists into Digital Humanities
– There is no “Killer app” for the humanities, only
important technologies (Unicode, XML, etc.)
● It is also very much about community
– Change in sense of what is allowed and is important
– New research methodologies: “Standing on the
Shoulders of Trolls”
– Building confidence among practitioners who may
have defined themselves in opposition to technology
– But not surrendering what is important about us:
critical reflection on human values and principles

16. Some models.

17. The Lethbridge Journal Incubator
● Attempt to discover new resources for ensuring
the sustainability of Scholarly publishing
● Does this by discovering hidden value in the
processes by which scholarly dissemination
occurs
● Funds Open Access (community good) by
training humanities students in extensible
digital skills

18. Two business models

19. Trains while funding Open Access

20. Visionary Cross Project
● High quality scholarly material (far better than
anything previously known)
● Focus on Giving Back to the Community
– Working with local parish
– Early focus on teaching and public tools

21. Visionary Cross Project
● High quality scholarly material (far better than
anything previously known)
● Focus on Giving Back to the Community
– Working with local parish
– Early focus on teaching and public tools

22. Global Outlook::Digital Humanities

23. Global Outlook::Digital Humanities
● New Communities and Collaborations
introduce new ideas
– Minimal computing
– Multilingualism (“Whisperers”)
– Paradisciplinary collaboration
● i.e. Anglo-Saxonist interviewing for a professorship in
Basel but not as a medievalist

24. New Pedagogies
● Flipped classrooms
● MOOCs
● Unessays (bit.ly/Unessay)
● Entrepreneur/Incubator spaces

25. Conclusions
● Technological change is affecting the humanities in
fundamental ways
– Methodology
– What we study
– Relationship to the public
– How we are organised
● But this is not threatening
– It is a moment our strengths have been waiting for
● We must change--not so much to survive as to thrive
– But speed of change means we need to support our faculty
even as we retrain our students
● Much more than a question of individual technologies!

26. Thank you
daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca