GeoHumanities

Overview

The increasing trend of spatialisation in many disciplines within the social sciences and humanities (e.g. archaeology, art history, literary studies, sociology, anthropology) since the 1990s is brought about by the re-consideration of space as an equally important phenomenon as time where the constitution of social life is concerned. This “spatial turn” has rendered geo-humanities knowledge a key component in the theory and practice of social sciences and humanities. Geo-humanities is a dynamic and exciting domain today benefiting from the rapidly proliferating interaction between the disciplines of humanities, social sciences and geography and is continuously spurred on by fruitful challenges from the developments in digital technologies.

The principal objective of the GeoHumanities working group is to establish a linked open data registry for a wide range of freely available geospatial datasets and services on the internet applicable to humanities research. While repositories for online geospatial data and services exist, they have limitations regarding the integration of information in different sources in a meaningful way. The registry established by the working group will use semantic web technology to allow querying geospatial datasets and services in terms of their relevance and applicability for a specific geographic region and/or humanities research domain.

A second objective of the working group is to provide freely available, high quality e-schooling about innovative digital geo-humanities practices and research methodologies as part of the #dariahTeach learning platform. The freely available e-schooling opportunities created by the working group will inform and train graduate and post-graduate students, scholars and other interested parties on new developments in and possibilities provided by the field of geo-humanities in the age of digital media.