A DARIAH Spotlight Publication, March 2025
By Susan Schreibman, Professor of Digital Arts and Culture Maastricht University, Co-Director, DARIAH and former Co-Chair of the DARIAH Working Group #dariahTeach
Introduction
Digital humanities (DH) tends to be described in terms of technologies and methodologies. Digital Humanists are often typified as intermediaries between computer scientists and those who are less technologically inclined. But DH is discussed far less as instruments for societal change and vehicles for a public good. The objective of the #dariahTeach course, Social Justice in the Digital Humanities, was to address this lacuna in collaboration between two DARIAH Working Groups, #dariahTeach & Ethics and Legality in Digital Arts & Humanities (ELDAH). While Social Justice as a concept and practice takes various forms in different disciplines, many of the projects in this course frame their research around restorative social justice: a value-based approach that foregrounds inclusion, democracy, responsibility, reparation, safety, healing, and reintegration.
We set out to create a learning resource which would give voice to a diversity of social justice communities and to researchers working closely with such communities, deploying the digital in service of (often local) social justice causes. Working with both contemporary and historical cases, we encountered a strong history of social justice research and a real-world approach in participatory and situated research, where digital and computational approaches as well as archival practices are themselves challenged by social justice insights and practices.
Marianne Ping Huang, Co-Chair of the DARIAH WG #dariahTeach and Associate Professor at the School for Communication and Culture, Aarhus University
The editors of this course acknowledge that the choice of case studies is based in some measure on our personal connections and positionality, acknowledging that the majority of case studies research was undertaken in English. We are also aware that we may be reproducing injustice in terms of the case studies not included or the editorial interventions made. We are therefore keen to rectify any limitations and oversights, and expand our case studies beyond those included in the initial publication. If after reading this Spotlight post, you have a project that you feel would be a good fit for inclusion, please get in touch with us at socialjusticedt[at]gmail.com.
Course Design
As with other #dariahTeach courses, Social Justice in the Digital Humanities was designed to be used within the classroom, but it can equally be used by individual learners or researchers wishing to learn more about the subject. The course consists of three case-study based units: ‘Introduction to Social Justice and the Digital Humanities’, ‘Ethics, Legal, and Moral Frameworks’, and ‘Social Justice in Digital Humanities Practice’, accompanied by a final unit entitled ‘Toolkit’. The first three units include an introduction written by one of the course editors, followed by between 6-8 case studies. For this course, we were generous in our interpretation of digital humanities, including work not only carried out in universities and research institutes, but digital scholarship taking place in archives, museums, and libraries. Moreover, we sought out scholarship happening beyond the major centres of digital humanities in North America and Europe. At the time of writing, the course consists of 21 case studies from Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. As each case study includes a robust bibliography, it is ideal as a starting point for further research.
As Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar writes: “Working on projects with socially engaged and politically aware digital humanists means constantly balancing technological possibilities with ethical challenges, especially when working with communities that have historically been excluded from dominant discourses.”
Case studies were, by and large, written by project PIs and underwent a peer review process. Following this, each case study was thoughtfully designed in consultation with the PI by one of our designers — Felix Bui, Ella van Geuns and Anna Villarica from Maastricht University – -who each worked on different case studies. Design choices reflect the ethos of the project, frequently picking up on the digital project’s colour scheme, historical period, and approach. As the #dariahTeach site also allows for interactivity, each case study also includes a variety of interactive elements, from quizzes and more reflective maker-based exercises, to image sliders and pull-down menus.
We want to provide practical resources for conducting inclusive and ethically aware research in the digital humanities, collecting tools, guidelines and tutorials which are in line with best scientific practices – but actually usable.
Walter Scholger, Co-Chair of the DARIAH Working Group ELDAH and Deputy Director of the Centre for Information Modelling – Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Graz
The final unit is entitled ‘Toolkit’ and consists of resources that can provide the theoretical and methodological starting point for those who wish to embark on ethically aware research. The unit is divided into four parts: 1) Consent and Licenses; 2) Data Ethics; 3) Identity and Accessibility; and 4) Ethical Research Practices. The unit introduces a variety of tools, such as the Consent Form Wizard or the Data Ethics Toolkit, or the RaceWorks Toolkit. It also features the Mukutu CMS, a content management system for indigenous cultural heritage.
Methodological and Conceptual Approaches
Taken together, the 21 case studies in Social Justice in the Digital Humanities demonstrate how widely socially-engaged and politically-aware digital scholarship is happening around the world in a variety of institutional settings. The case studies embed various conceptual approaches, including social justice, data feminism, postcolonial and decolonial theory, and diversifying the curriculum.
In developing the course, we prioritized integrating best practice principles, notably the FAIR and CARE guidelines. We recognized that working with data related to marginalized, Indigenous, or minority communities requires heightened sensitivity to ethics, privacy, and intellectual property rights. Our goal was to select and present case studies that respect diverse cultural traditions and values, consciously avoiding the imposition of dominant Western perspectives.
Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar, Co-Chair of the DARIAH Working Group ELDAH, and Head of the Research Archive at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research
Many case studies focus on how these considerations should be taken into account when doing research or designing exhibitions in reparative ways when dealing with contested histories and/or material culture. In keeping with the ethos of social justice, the course is community-driven, with the majority of case studies authored by those who envisioned, developed, and managed these amazing projects. A smaller number of case studies were developed by those working on the Social Justice and the Digital Humanities course. Taken together, these projects underscore how digital humanists (broadly conceived) contribute to societal debates, while uncovering and exposing past and present wrongs. Each case study includes the background and a rationale for the project, elucidates the theories and concepts underpinning the research, as well as the choices made for adopting specific technologies and methodologies.
A Sampling of Case Studies
The North American Slave Narratives Digital Library
From Unit : ‘The North American Slave Narratives Digital Library’ authored by William L. Andrews, who is the E. Maynard Adams Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA). This case study is an example of a project utilising historical sources, in this case, first person narratives of those who were previously enslaved. The goal of the project is to make more widely available a collection of over 300 published texts of ‘inspiring testimony to the dauntless fortitude and faith of those who endured enslavement, overcame it, and bore witness against it.’ The collection, launched in 1999 and hosted at the University of Chapel Hill library, is fully downloadable, and contains robust metadata about each of the texts.
One of the first person narratives included in the site is the memoir by William and Ellen Craft entitled Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. The book recounts the journey of the couple as fugitive slaves to the North and hence freedom. This memoir was published in London in 1860.
Indigenous Data Sovereignty and the Researcher’s Responsibilities
A case study from Unit 2 is entitled ‘Indigenous Data Sovereignty and the Researcher’s Responsibilities’, authored by Naomi Adelson, Professor and Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada). Adelson’s case study provides an entry point to explore what Indigenous data sovereignty means in relation to research and creative practices to better understand the responsibility we have as researchers and scholars to the communities and individuals with whom we work in terms of ethical, transparent, and sustainable principles and practices of data management toward ensuring Indigenous data sovereignty.
Walking the Archive of District Six
From Unit 3, the case study ‘Walking the Archive of District Six’, is a joint project of Siddique Motala, a senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and David A. Wallace, a Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Information at the University of Michigan (USA). Motola and Wallace have have joined their expertise to combine information from the archives with a walking-as-research methodology Motala calls ‘counter-surveying’ to reimpose narratives that have been displaced during the forced removal of residents of Cape Town’s District Six to challenge the silencing and erasure of Black people.
One of seven aerial images of District Six. The first image is from 1945 before the demolition to 2019 when the vacant land is slowly being rebuilt. This image shows the area in 1996. Pictures from the Global DH Symposium presentation (Wallace & Motala, 2022).
Embedding in DARIAH and #dariahTeach
Social Justice in the Digital Humanities is one of twenty-four courses in English and six in translation on #dariahTeach, an open access platform for open educational resources (OERs). The platform was begun in 2013 with an Erasmus + grant bringing together colleagues from DARIAH’s VCC2 (Virtual Competency Centre on Research and Education) from eight European countries. It was the first educational project undertaken by a pan-European network associated with DARIAH, which began DARIAH’s trajectory in developing an expertise in training and education for the digital arts and humanities. #dariahTeach continues today, as a DARIAH Working Group that focuses on producing pedagogical material for the platform. Courses in #dariahTeach are indexed by DARIAH-Campus, DARIAH’s discovery framework and hosting platform for open educational resources. #dariahTeach and DARIAH-Campus are currently exploring ways of closer alignment.
In the 2024-2025 academic year, I used the Social Justice and the Digital Humanities course material in preparing my course lectures on ethics for DH Masters students at the Ecole des chartres. While I initially used this as a resource to help inform my lecture and structure with some brief examples, based on the quality of the materials and the positive reception from the students during our discussion, next year I will integrate it more fully into the course – assigning readings and notably case studies. This is really a marvelous resource, useful for both an educator as pedagogical support, and for students as in-depth and academically-rigorous case studies that show how to put the theoretical considerations of ethics and social justice into real world applications.
Edward J. Gray, National Coordination Officer for DARIAH-EU
Courses in #dariahTeach range from the technical (Digital Scholarly Editions: Manuscripts, Texts, and TEI Encoding or Digital Tools for the research and study of ancient writing cultures) to the conceptual (including Storytelling for Digital Narratives and Blended Spaces or Introduction to Design Thinking and Maker Culture). Social Justice in the Digital Humanities was funded by a DARIAH Working Group grant in 2022, combining the expertise of two DARIAH Working Groups, #dariahTeach and Ethics and Legality in the Digital Arts and Humanities. The course is edited and managed by Susan Schreibman, and co-edited by Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar, Marianne Ping Huang, and Walter Scholger. We were grateful for the expertise and enthusiasm of four research assistants, Sina Krottmaier (from the University of Graz, Department of Digital Humanities), and Felix Bui, Ella van Geuns, and Anna Villarica from Maastricht University. The editors of the course are grateful to Norbert Czirjak at The Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH) for his years of unstinting development assistance.
For those interested in learning more or contributing to the work of these WGs, we encourage you to reach out to the WG Chairs. For Ethics and Legality in the Digital Arts and Humanities, please contact Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar or Walter Scholger at eldah@dariah.eu For #dariahTeach, please reach out to Marianne Ping Huang or Costas Papadopoulos via the contact form on the #dariahTeach site.
Author Bio*:
Susan Schreibman is Professor of Digital Arts and Culture in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 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, while developing new born-digital paradigms. Her areas of specialization include digital humanities, media studies, literary modernism, and Irish cultural studies.
*Author bio is accurate at the time of writing.
Further Reading
Anderson, Jane. Protocols and Guidelines for Ethical Engagement with Indigenous and Local Communities. World Intellectual Property Organization briefing for Estée Lauder, 2011. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55cfbe2de4b02774e51fac68/t/5614a952e4b0efb3f6417d8b/1444194642219/Estee+Lauder_Protocols.pdf.
Bailey, Moya, Anne Cong-Huyen, Alexis Lothian, and Amanda Phillips. “Reflections on a Movement: TransformDH, Growing Up.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled/section/9cf90340-7aae-4eae-bdda-45b8b4540b6b#ch08.
Barry, Brian. Why Social Justice Matters. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005.
D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren Klein. Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020.
Losh, Elizabeth, and Jacqueline Wernimont, eds. Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
Dunbar, Anthony W. “Introducing Critical Race Theory to Archival Discourse: Getting the Conversation Started.” Archives and Museum Informatics 6, no. 1 (March 2006): 109–129.
Kim, Dorothy. “Embodying the Database: Race, Gender, and Social Justice.” In Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities, edited by Dorothy Kim and Adeline Koh, 145–202. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1r7878x.8.
Larson, Doran. “Prison Writer as Witness: Can DH Read for Social Justice?” DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 15, no. 3 (2021).
McGurk, Thomas J., and Sébastien Caquard. “To What Extent Can Online Mapping Be Decolonial? A Journey Throughout Indigenous Cartography in Canada.” The Canadian Geographer 64, no. 1 (2020): 49–64. https://doi-org.ezproxy.ecu.edu.au/10.1111/cag.12602.
McPherson, Tara. “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? Or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 139–160. University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Proferes, Nicholas. “What Ethics Can Offer the Digital Humanities and What the Digital Humanities Can Offer Ethics.” In Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities, edited by Kristen Schuster and Stuart Dunn, 416–427. London: Routledge, 2020.
Risam, Roopika. “Decolonizing the Digital Humanities in Theory and Practice.” In Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Jentery Sayers, 78–86. New York: Routledge, 2018.
