The future of digital humanities in research | WPN World People News

Some commentators argue that we are now in “post-digital” era in which we are coming to terms with vast technological change. Digital Humanities tools and approaches were once the premise of a small group of enthusiasts, but they are increasingly on the research agenda as researchers get to grips with their potential.

However, while digital humanities has become increasingly popular and influential as a subject area, its relationship to more conventional academic disciplines and to creative practice looks increasingly complex.

An event at the School of Advanced Study (University of London) on 5 May 2015 will explore the relationship between policy, research and practice in digital humanities. The event will bring together researchers working in the field from across Europe, and is being organised by the AHRC Digital Transformations theme together with the European Science Foundation (ESF) Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities (NeDiMAH, opens in new window), which the UK has chaired for four years.

Professor Andrew Prescott, Theme Leadership Fellow for the AHRC’s Digital Transformations theme, said:

“This is an important moment in the engagement of arts and humanities researchers with digital and other technologies. The use of digital technologies is rapidly spreading beyond small inward-looking communities of digital humanities specialists to a wider range of arts and humanities researchers, who are forming new alliances and configurations. The Digital Transformations theme is pleased to be working with NeDiMAH to consider how we can transform the existing assumptions and structures and enable the arts and humanities to address such grand challenges as creative cities, cultural heritage, big data and the relationship to emerging forms of science”.

Source: Arts and Humanities Research Council