Wanted! Next generation digital humanists
The research landscape is changing and research can now be more of an adventure than ever. Bringing new technology to research problems in the humanities and social sciences is making new areas of inquiry accessible and changing the scope and scale that’s possible for researchers. Whether it’s using the latest CT scanners to learn more about ancient Egyptian mummies or using text-mining techniques to analyse huge digitised archives, there are whole worlds becoming available to bold explorers. So what do the adventurous new digital humanists look like and what’s in their toolkit?
A domain expert
While the digital tools are exciting, it’s critical that researchers are still experts in their domains and understand the background of their field and its problems. Only someone with deep knowledge of their field is going to know which are the compelling research questions to ask and how to begin looking for the answers. It’s no good going looking for treasure if you won’t recognise it when you see it!
Data-literate
At a fundamental level, the digital humanist gets data. Humanities researchers have always been collecting data, but we haven’t always thought about it like that. Digital tools, however, demand that researchers think much more explicitly about how we collect, manage and structure information. Whatever the object of study, the data itself must be set up correctly to enable the dataset to be interrogated. This means basics like having files in the right formats for the tools and the information structured so that it can be analysed. Want to analyse the dates of letters in an archive? Make sure that the date is in a consistent format in your database. Getting these basics right is essential to being able to work effectively with data.
Going further, the digital humanist needs to know how to process and combine data to get the most out of it. She also needs to understand the limitations of the data she’s using, which sometimes means recognising the challenges and limits of digitisation itself. To be really sure that she’s not going astray, our digital explorer must also understand the tools she uses and their strengths and weaknesses. Like any research methodology, digital tools will return a result but the researcher needs to be critical when interpreting it. Knowing the field, knowing the data and understanding the tools mean that our explorer is less likely to mistake a crocodile for a safe bridge across a river.
Fearless
It sounds like a lot to ask. And it is. Researchers are already under pressure to know and do a huge amount. But digital humanists need to be prepared to strike out into the unknown. Most importantly, the digital humanist is unafraid of technology. She’s willing to try new techniques and lines of inquiry and is excited to collaborate with experts from other fields who bring fresh learning and perspectives to their projects. With a fearless attitude and the right tools and companions, the digital humanist is equipped to go exploring in uncharted territories and bring back new discoveries!
I was recently fortunate to go to London for Mozilla Festival and meet with a number of digital humanities practitioners. This post grew out of my conversations with them. Special thanks to Ben O’Steen, James Baker, Daniel Pett, Jane Winters, Simon Mahony, Ben Showers, and Mark Hedges for being so generous with their time and thoughts.
