We’re delighted to announce that the registration for the Autumn 2024 series of Friday Frontiers is now open. The Friday Frontiers webinars allow researchers, practitioners and stakeholders from across the broad DARIAH community, and now beyond, to learn about current research, best practice and social impact, and different tools and methods in digital humanities scholarly practice.
The webinar sessions are all free to attend, but registration is required. Presentations are all recorded and published at a later date on DARIAH-Campus.
The details of the upcoming talks, along with their registration links are below:
Friday 4th October 2024, 10.30am WEST / 11.30am CEST / 12.30pm EEST
Title: Innovations for a Unified Digital Collection: The Sloane Lab Journey to Unlocking the Past and Shaping the Future
Speakers: Dr. Andreas Vlachidis (University College London), Prof. Dr. Julianne Nyhan (University College London / TU Darmstadt), Dr. Andrew Flinn (University College London), Dr. Alda Terracciano (University College London)
Registration details: https://dariah.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqfuqurT0tHdf7ZOTZJylQbvYo733WdT88
Abstract
The presentation will take you through the journey of integrating Sloane’s historical catalogues and present-day cataloguing systems, driven by insights from a participatory design process and contemporary understandings of cultural heritage collections that emphasise the needs and requirements of decolonised and multivocal heritage. Crucially, the participatory design process has sought to co-create with expert and interested communities, knowledge of the questions that individuals and communities wish to ask of Sloane lab-also in light of the highly problematic nature of Sloane’s collection, having been partly funded through the profits derived from the enslavement of African people and to respond to the historical and epistemic violence via the technical design of
the lab. Uniting the Sloane collection serves as a microcosm of the challenges faced in integration of disparate data and mobilisation of historical datasets for facilitating access to extensive knowledge and information held in such a vast and varied collection.
At the core of the Sloane Lab resides the Knowledge Base (KB), which extends CIDOC-CRM with semantics that handle uncertainty, multivocality and modality of the collection (e.g., conflicting data from different records about the same object), data absences (i.e., gaps in the records), the difficulty of classifying objects, and the fact that some of the objects described in the historical catalogues reflect the collector’s language and perspective and that some are now lost. Providing a homogeneous data environment using formal semantics to allow data integration, semantic enrichment, and knowledge discovery across a disparate environment of resources the KB facilitates resourceful query, visualisation, and fact-finding. The presentation will provide a rich insight to the design and development of the Sloane Lab knowledge base, the modelling choices, and priorities in relation to semantics and vocabularies and the range of challenges addressed in the process of aggregation in terms of data disparity, integration facility, conflicting information and inconsistency, uncertainty and data absence.
About the speakers
Dr. Andreas Vlachidis
Dr. Andreas Vlachidis is Associate Professor in Information Science at UCL’s department of information studies, teaching modules in Information Science Technology and in Natural Language Processing and Text Analysis. He is Co-Investigator and Technical Lead of the Sloane Lab, leading the project’s aims on data unification, aggregation, and knowledge base development. His research is interdisciplinary and draws from Information Science, Humanities and Computer Science. His main research interests are in Information Extraction, Semantic Data Modelling and Metadata. He is interested in the application of Natural Language Processing and Semantic Technologies for advancing information integration, FAIR data use and interoperability. He is also interested in text mining and conceptual data modelling within the broader areas of humanities, cultural heritage, and social sciences.
Prof. Dr. Julianne Nyhan
Prof. Dr. Julianne Nyhan is Chair of Humanities Data Science and Methodology, TU Darmstadt and Managing Director of the Institute of History, TU Darmstadt, Germany. She remains a part-time Professor of Digital Humanities, UCL, UK, where she leads the Arts and Humanities Research Council Towards a National Collection-funded “The Sloane Lab: looking back to build future shared collections”. Her research interests include digital oral history; the role of non-canonical histories in challenging exclusionary knowledge hierarchies and epistemologies; and digital and participatory approaches to the representation, and where appropriate, contestation of absence in the historical archive. She has published widely, especially the history of digital humanities and oral history and she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UK.
Dr. Andrew Flinn
Dr Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History and Vice Dean for Postgraduate Research in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University College London where he has been teaching archive studies and public history since 2002. He is Deputy Principal Investigator on the Sloane Lab (one of the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Towards a National Collection projects). He is also a Trustee of National Life Stories at the British Library, chair of the UK and Ireland Community Archives and Heritage Group and a member of the ICA’s Section on Archive Education steering group. His research interests include community-based archives, archival activism and social justice, and digital oral history.
Dr. Alda Terracciano
Dr Alda Terracciano is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at UCL and Participatory Design Consultant at The Sloane Lab (AHRC TaNC Programme). Her research interests include black and Asian theatre in the UK; community archives and critical heritage; immersive technologies, participatory research and socially engaged artistic practice. She researched on digital economy at Queen Mary, University of London, and is founding chair of Future Histories, the first independent archive of African, Asian and Caribbean performing arts in the UK.
Friday 8th November 2024, 10.30am WET / 11.30am CET / 12.30pm EET
Title: Visualising Knowledge: 3D Digital Editions and Their Scholarly Potential
Speakers: Prof. Susan Schreibman (Maastricht University) and Dr. Costas Papadopoulos (Maastricht University).
Registration details: https://dariah.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlcempqzwtGtCztKqNalIHCW8Eaml9IpGZ
Abstract
Scholarship in three dimensions can transcend the limitations of traditional two-dimensional representations of objects that exist in the physical world in three dimensions. It has the ability to provide users (both researchers and the public) with immersive and interactive experiences, enhancing their study and interpretation. This is true for 3D representations of individual objects and for more complex reconstructed scenes.
3D Digital Scholarly Editions add a contextualising layer of scholarship to the model: scholarship that has been possible for several decades for text-based editions. The contextualising possibilities share much with traditional digital scholarly editions in terms of textual annotation and apparatus, but it also has the possibility of, not only incorporating multimodal annotation (images, video, as well as other models), but annotation that is 3D-specific, such as tools for measurement, for views into the model, the use of textures and colours to represent reconstruction and hypothesis.
The presenters of this talk have been addressing these challenges and potential through two interrelated projects: PURE3D which is developing an infrastructure for the development and publication of 3D Digital Scholarly Editions, and OPER3D which is exploring Open Publication and Peer Review for 3D Scholarship. As such, this talk will also consider issues related to data preservation, standardisation, as well as issues around the publication and peer review of 3D DSEs. This presentation will showcase the scholarly potential of 3D DSEs, advocating for their adoption as a new tool in the DH toolkit for new formats for the dissemination and interrogation of knowledge.
About the speakers
Prof. Susan Schreibman
Susan Schreibman is Professor of Digital Arts and Culture at Maastricht University. She works at the intersections of computationally-based teaching and research in the interplay of the digital archive, cultural innovation, and participatory engagement design, processes and projects. A focus of her research is in the design, critical, and interpretative analysis of systems that remediate publication modalities and manuscript culture from the analogue world, while developing new born-digital paradigms. Her current research projects PURE3D, Contested Memories: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, and #dariahTeach.
Dr Costas Papadopoulos
Costas Papadopoulos is an Associate Professor in Digital Humanities and Culture Studies at Maastricht University. He is the Coordinator of The Plant: Playground and Laboratory for New Technologies and is elected on the Maastricht Young Academy. His research spans the development of 3D (re)constructions and virtual worlds to interpret societies of the past, to the application of computational imaging to analyse material culture. Much of his work revolves around 3D heritage visualisation, particularly focusing on the development of systems, workflows, and infrastructures. His most recent research projects include PURE3D, OPER3D, and #dariahTeach.
Friday 6th December 2024, 10.30am WET / 11.30am CET / 12.30pm EET
Title: When Applied and Critical Digital Humanities Meets Democracy: The KT4D Project
Speakers: Prof. Jennifer Edmond & Dr. Eleonora Lima, Trinity College Dublin
Registration details: https://dariah.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZctdeGvqToiHNdbJGk5crXQ9guhQUgBeQBw
Abstract
The Knowledge Technologies for Democracy (KT4D) project is investigating how democracy and civic participation can be better facilitated in the face of rapidly changing knowledge technologies – namely Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data – to enable actors across society to capitalise on the many benefits these technologies can bring in terms of community empowerment, social integration, individual agency, improving trust in both institutions and technological instruments while also identifying and mitigating potential ethical, legal and cultural risks. Though its broad partner consortium includes many social scientists, SMEs and NGOs, the project was distinctively conceived of and is led from the perspective of the critical digital humanities, which, with its balanced traditions of cultural critique and technical building, offers new opportunities to provide alternatives to the techno-solutionism defined by one scholar as “portraying technologies as a substitute for political decisions and as a model for politics so commonly applied to complex problems in the 21st Century.” (Ferrari, 2020). Throughout its activities, KT4D brings precisely this balance of technological acumen and humanistic criticality to its approach to facilitating more productive interactions between AI, big data and democracy. In particular this presentation will focus on how the project integrates humanistic knowledge, values, and modes of interaction to expand our notion of digital humanities work, and of the future of civic participation in a technologised world.
About the speakers
Prof. Jennifer Edmond
Jennifer EDMOND is Professor in Digital Humanities at Trinity College Dublin. Over the past 10 years, Jennifer has been the PI or co-PI of 11 large-scale, interdisciplinary, funded research projects, with total grant capture amounting to almost €15 million. She has also served in leadership roles in a number of European-level policy and infrastructure organisations. Her research explores interdisciplinarity, humanistic and hybrid research processes (with a special focus on the infrastructures needed to support them), and critical digital humanities as a contributor to both research and technology development. In these fields, she has a publication record that includes more than 50 internationally peer-reviewed articles, chapters, reports, datasets and books, all single-authored or co-created with her network of 60 co-authors from 16 countries. Jennifer is also very committed to the impact and public communication of her research, regularly appearing in the public media and co-creating STEAM exhibitions and events.
Dr Eleonora Lima
Eleonora Lima is Research Fellow in Digital Humanities at Trinity College Dublin where she works on the EU funded project Knowledge Technologies for Democracy (KT4D). Her main role in the project is to investigate the cultural influences underlying AI and big data by addressing people’s real and imagined interactions with it. Her work is built upon her expertise in the cultural history of information technologies, particularly in literature and the arts, a field in which she has extensive publications. Currently she is working on her third book, the first comprehensive cultural history of computing in Italy through the lens of literature. Eleonora is also Associate Editor for the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) and was formerly a member of the Ethically Aligned Design for the Arts Committee (2019-2022), part of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. She holds a PhD in Italian and Media Studies (UW-Madison, 2015), and was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin (2018-2020) and at the University of Toronto (2017-2018).
