Bringing Research to the People: DARIAH Theme 2016 “Public Humanities”
In 2016 the DARIAH Theme was “Public Humanities”, which targeted the impact of DARIAH’s work on the public. DARIAH published a call related to this theme in early 2016, and received ten proposals. Finally a total of seven initiatives were funded. The “Public Humanities” call built on the previous DARIAH Theme “Open Humanities”. The Theme call defined “Public humanities” as activities of cultural institutions that engage the public with arts and humanities research and thus adds to the public’s well-being. The public refers to the general public or specific organisations such as media or educational institutions, for example schools.
To further develop its work with the public, DARIAH will run a conference in November 2017 in Aarhus to investigate public value-creation in the creative and cultural industries through digital transformation from a European perspective. During the conference funded projects will be presented.
Overview of funded initiatives:
- DARIAH-DK (Denmark), Lene Elsner: “Developing a Cultural Debriefing Tool”. DARIAH-DK’s submission was based on the fact that Europe is currently receiving refugees from many different countries having diverse cultural backgrounds. It proposed the development of a Cultural Debriefing Tool to provide the DARIAH community with an opportunity to find new ways to interact with completely new citizens, who may have a different approach to the European way of things as well as to communicate these findings to the general public.
- #dariahTeach, Claire Clivaz (Switzerland): “Open Education. The Why and How of Digitally Enhanced Learning for Communities of Enablers”. This workshop explored how new pedagogical aspects of digital enhanced learning may be driven by communities of enablers and stakeholders and also find their way to be embedded in education frameworks. Learn more about this initiative
- DARIAH-HR (Croatia), Tihomir Živic: “Digitization of Heritage Librarian Funds: Our Necessity and Obligation”. DARIAH-HR proposed a workshop series as well as an international conference on methods and best practices in the Digitisation of Heritage Funds.
- DARIAH-IE (Ireland), Maureen Burgess: “Public History Bootcamp”. The overall aim of this project is to develop a framework to empower members of the public (specifically locally based community organisations) to explore and share their local history and culture by raising their awareness of both digital humanities and public history methods.
- DARIAH-IE (Ireland), Alexander O’Connor: “Cultural Exploration and Infrastructures for Citizens in the Framework of Cloud Services”. Ireland’s proposal set out to explore the roles that citizens may play in research processes. It suggested a baseline survey to gain a clear understanding of the crowdsourcing ecosystem, a systematic review of the models of participation, recruitment, result harvesting and sustainability. The study formed the basis for a series of expert workshops between practitioners, researchers, technologists and, where applicable, ethicists, with a focus on Citizen Science in lexicography and linguistics.
- DARIAH-NL (Netherlands), Johan Oomen: “MediaDNA – Investigating emerging technologies in Humanities research to serve public use of digitised audio-visual material”. This initiative proposed a two-day international conference to explore the potential of video recognition, fingerprinting and data tracing technologies for innovative research and applications within the Digital Humanities and their public impact.
- DARIAH-PL (Poland), Jakub Szprot: “Public humanities and digital humanities: mutual inspiration and common (digital) tools”. DARIAH-PL proposed a series of three workshops. The objective of this project is to share expertise and to identify opportunities for cooperation between scientific institutions in the area of digital humanities on the one hand, and GLAM institutions and organizations (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) involved in public humanities on the other hand. Learn more about this initiative
