DARIAH is a pan-European infrastructure for arts and humanities scholars working with computational methods. It supports digital research as well as the teaching of digital research methods.
Data as a term is too flat an ontology for the kinds of things that we are all dealing with, argues Sally Wyatt in this keynote lecture. It reduces people, events, objects to things, bits, to be imagined as impersonal, scientific and neutral. Also, she contends, the use of the word 'data' tends to assume that everything is digital. In this keynote, she explains her argument that this is wrong and asks: 'what are we talking about when we talk about data in the humanities?'
Many academic disciplines use data science to analyze contemporary culture. The question posed by Lev Manovich in this lecture is: shall we continue to aggregate big cultural data and reduce it to a small set of patterns? Or shall we refuse this dominant paradigm instead and focus on diversity, variability and differences (including tiny ones), i.e., work on big cultural data without aggregation and with attention to what is infrequent and outliers?
In this lecture, Roxanne Wyns discusses her experiences with research infrastructures and, specifically, the challenges we face concerning sustainability.
In this lecture, Teresa Scassa examines the complex role of intellectual property(IP) rights in the creation and advancement of academic knowledge. While IP rights can create barriers to access, reuse and transparency, she argues, they can also further creativity and innovation by providing revenue, and by protecting other values such as privacy/confidentiality, and integrity/authenticity. IP rights can also, in some circumstances, protect against the exploitation of individuals and communities. Framing IP rights in terms of a sometimes complex web of relationships, this presentation asks what role IP rights should play in ethically open science.
In this lecture, Jon Tennant argues that 'Open Science' is 'good science', because it promotes transparency, reproducibility, and public good. However, he argues, researchers are not rewarded for doing good science. Tennant asks: 'how can we all work together to kick-start a new culture of open scientific practices, without putting our best and brightest at risk? How do we want people in the future to see this pivotal time in the history of science?' He challenges the audience to answer the question: 'which side do you want to be on?'
Mikko Tolonen was the first keynote speaker at the DARIAH Annual Event 2016. His talk was entitled 'Applying modern data analytics to classical questions in the humanities: a perspective from Finland'. It drew attention to the benefits of interdisciplinarity and effective communication between 'centred' disciplines for research in the digital humanities
In this lecture, Mark Cote takes us on a journey through a host of research projects that contextualise the way that he and other researchers try to address cultural data.
The DARIAH Winter School 'Open Data Citation for Social Sciences and Humanities' brought together researchers, professionals with various backgrounds, and students from 15 countries. In total 38 people met in Prague, Czech Republic, to learn about various aspects of open access and open data, as well as many other subjects on digital research.
This DARIAH Guide brings together tools, videos, short articles and other training materials that might be relevant when reflecting on your data management processes both in the immediate context of your research and in their broader disciplinary context. Its aim is to equip you with tools and practical advice, but more importantly, with conceptual twists that will help you to establish ethically committed, optimal and as open as possible research and data management workflows.
Maija Paavolainen explains the challenges of finding a 'common language' in the digital humanities. She finds that simply talking about this issue helps. Thus, experience in communicating across disciplines is a positive outcome of training initiatives in itself. The role of research infrastructures, she argues, is certainly in sharing tools and best practices. However, most importantly, it is also to create opportunities for people to meet and learn face-to-face. She explains that humanities scholars are more accustomed to using digital methods and tools in the initial (information gathering) and final (publication) stages of research. However, DARIAH, specifically, can help them to also use them in the core part of the research process - i.e. in organising, annotating, and enriching data.
In this video, Jennifer Edmond gives us insights into her background in critical theory approaches and German literary history, through a spell in technical support and research strategy in the humanities, and how this has impacted her work in DARIAH. She talks about the importance of pushing beyond the foundations of your academic training to do new things in the humanities. How can the system vaildate this kind of groundbreaking research, and make it possible for early career researchers to make the leap? She explains the unique role of DARIAH in this process.
Claire Clivaz explains how she has found that the tensions between disciplines in interdisciplinary work can be similar no matter what disciplines are being combined. Encounters between biology and computing, for example, can be as challenging as between humanities disciplines and computing. Dr Clivaz, herself, began her academic career in biblical manuscript studies but developed an interest in the digital humanities very quickly, at a time when the impact of computing was being felt in the humanities more widely. She explains the usefulness of the DH Course Registry in finding university-based, formal, DH training in Switzerland. However, she argues that informal opportunities to learn are crucial. One phrase that appears again and again in the digital humanities, she states, is: continuous training.
