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KUB Datalab: DH - CULT (Digital Humanities - Culture and Text)

DH - CULT (Digital Humanities - Culture and Text)

DH Cult KUB Datalab

We are a group of researchers/teachers at HUM who are interested in different methods related to digital culture and text studies. The group focuses on digital text studies, theory, and methodology and will work to apply these in both our research and teaching practices. The group's activities are interdisciplinary and thus address (but are not limited to) researchers from several departments in the fields of culture, literature, and language. The activities of the group include the exchange of ideas, solutions, and perspectives, as well as the identification of problems that we may best solve together. The aim is to strengthen the study of digital humanities that concerns digital text studies by establishing an interdisciplinary community of practitioners.
 
Activities
We will:

  • Share teaching experiences concerning digital methods in the study of texts.
  • Exchange teaching modules/tools/programmes that can improve the quality of teaching and develop competences across the faculty.
  • Invite of guest lecturers who can provide us with knowledge about methods and introduce us to new areas of text study. We favour an open lecture format, preferably followed by a workshop for the group and other researchers interested in digital text analysis. 
  • Define desired technical/methodological courses for the group in collaboration with KUB Datalab.

 
Purpose

  • We will work towards a possible interdisciplinary teaching module in Digital Humanities at HUM
  • We will explore the possibility of research collaborations and joint research applications
  • We will harness our competences at the faculty on digital methods for the study of texts

 
Contact

  • Associate Professor Robert Rix. Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies
  • Assistant Professor Bo Ærenlund Sørensen. Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
  • Special Adviser Lars Kjær. Copenhagen University Library | The Royal Danish Library
     

The following support the activities of the DH-CulT

  • Alexander Conroy
  • Bo Ærenlund Sørensen
  • Bolette Sandford Pedersen
  • Efram Sera-Shriar
  • Janus Mortensen
  • Jens Bjerring-Hansen
  • Julian Koch
  • Kim Ebensgaard
  • Kristian Hvelplund
  • Lars Kjær
  • Rasmus Christian Elling
  • Robert Rix

Past events

11 October 2024

Digital culte and Text

 

This was a unique opportunity to gain insight into different ways in which computer technology is being used as a tool in humanities research. 

 

The Program

12:00 – 12:05

Introduction to the conference.  

*

 12:05 - 12:25

Cognitive Modeling as method for researching the mind – possibilities and limitations. Theory of Mind modeling as example. 

Peter Thestrup Waade. Onsite. PhD Student. Aarhus University.  

Cognitive modeling is a formal and computational approach to researching an understanding the (human) mind, methodologically rooted in the natural sciences but belonging to psychology, psychiatry, and the humanities in terms of subject matter. Giving an approach to describe mental mechanisms that underlie observable behavior, cognitive modeling provides tools for formal and data-driven accounts of the mind – but also comes with many limitations. In this talk, I use Theory of Mind modeling as an illustrative example of the method, both its advantages and disadvantages. 

 12:25 - 12:30: Questions  

 *

12:35 - 12:55

Digital Humanities between Ambition and Pragmatism  

Jonas Kjøller-Rasmussen. Onsite. Information Specialist and PhD Student. University of Copenhagen
 

The combination of source accessibility and digital tools has inspired many novel and ambitious approaches to traditional humanities scholarship. Ambition, however, might sometimes yield to pragmatism when unfolded within the constraints of academic project management. In my presentation I will give a practical example of how high ambitions for the application of digital methods, when faced with obstacles, can be transformed into practical approaches that nonetheless provide valuable and unique insights that support and enhance traditional humanities scholarship at a fundamental level.

 12:55 - 13:00: Questions  

*

 13:05 - 13:35

Read, search and Research. Using Trinskribus on a 18th century handwritten large scale source material

Tine R. Reeh. Onsite. Associate Professor. University of Copenhagen

This paper presents some of the experiences from using Transkribus in an interdisciplinary and collective research project; Managing Melancholy. After a brief explanation of our aims and approach, I will give some examples from our work. Finally, I will touch on unexpected obstacles and opportunities that may inspire and inform other projects. 

 

 13:35 - 13:45: Questions 

*

 13:45 - 14:00: Break

 *

 14:00 – 14:35

Digital humanities, infrastructure, and multilingual inclusivity

  Paul Spence. Online. Reader in Digital Humanities. King’s College London

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the concept of Multilingual digital humanities, but what does DH understand by multilingualism, and how does DH research respond to the challenges which digital mediation presents for language diversity, language justice and language professionals? In this presentation, I will explore how Multilingual DH 'infrastructural' or 'workflow' responses engage with wider discussions about fostering epistemic diversity and global inclusivity in knowledge infrastructures.

  14:35 – 14:45: Questions  

*

14.45 - 15:00: Break  

*

15:00 – 15:40

Voyant and Spyral

Geoffrey Rockwell. Online. Professor of Philosophy and Digital Humanities. University of Alberta 

Voyant is a suite of text analysis and visualization tools that are widely used in the digital humanities, especially when introducing students to computer-assisted analysis of texts. In this presentation Geoffrey Rockwell will provide a brief history of Voyant leading up to the development of Spyral, a notebook programming extension to Voyant. He will demonstrate both Voyand and Spyral and discuss how Spyral provides a growth path for students and research projects. He will end by encouraging you to join the Voyant Consortium so that the tool evolves in ways that suit your research.

15:40 – 15:55: Questions  

*

15:55 – 16:00

Goodbye

 

15 June 2023

Talk by Professor Glenn Roe

Professor Gleen Roe talks at South Campus

 

Meet Professor Glenn Roe of Sorbonne University and hear him talk about the project "Modelling Enlightenment. Reassembling Networks of Modernity through data-driven research". It is on 15 June 2023, 11:00-12:00 at South Campus, room 24.0.11. Organizer: Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies and DH-Cult.

Read more: Intertextual networks of the French Enlightenment: the ModERN Project

7 March 2023

On this day, we had invited two students to give presentations based on their assignments and two local researchers presented experiences from the teaching.

Digital Humanities (DH) uses digital methods to solve humanities research questions, and once a year the organisation Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (DHNB) holds a conference that brings together Nordic and Baltic research environments to exchange knowledge and inspire each other.

This year the conference is online and free. To mark the start of the conference DHNB 2023, KUB Datalab is organising a workshop with four short presentations on how digital humanities are part of the research and teaching at Søndre Campus. The workshop is organized in collaboration with the network Digital Humanities Culture and Text (DH-CULT). DH-CULT is a local network on Søndre Campus for researchers who have an interest in exploring DH in relation to text.

It is free to participate in both the DHNB's online conference and the workshop. You can register for both via this link:  https://www.conftool.org/dhnb2023/ or by contacting Lars Kjær, lakj@kb.dk.
 

Programme

10:00 – 10:15
Welcome, presentation of the program, the DHNB, and DH activities at South Campus  by Lars Kjær

10:15 – 10:35
Digital methods in Chinese – illuminated by a research of dating profiles by Anna Davidsen Buhl

10:35 – 10:55
Digital methods in History – illuminated by a research of Danish industrial development by Mikkel Støvring Hansen
 
10:55 – 11:05
Short Break

11:05 – 11:20
Experiences from the classrooms and the introduction of digital methods in the teaching at Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies by Robert Rix

11:20 – 11:40
Experiences from the classrooms and the introduction of digital methods in the teaching at Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies by Bo Ærenlund Sørensen

11:40 – 11:50
Presentation of the KUB Datalab Calendar by Lars Kjær

11:50 – 12:00
Closing and networking

The Digital Humanities Discussion Group

DH Cult KUB Datalab

The Digital Humanities Discussion Group

Autumn 2024

The Digital Humanities Reading Group will meet again once a month during the autumn semester.

The meetings take place in English.

  • Friday 20th September, 14-15, in 24.3.62 [1] 
  • Friday 11th October 12-16, in Copenhagen University Library, Meeting Room 1. floor [2] 
  • Friday 22th November, 14-15, in 24.3.62 [3] 
  • Friday 6th December, 13-14, in 24.3.62 [4] 

We discuss either a work-in-progress text by one of the participants, a guest presentation, or a published paper, as part of an informal and friendly meet-up.

Readling list

[1] Sophie Thorkildsen will share some of her work in progress on digital corpus studies of translation shifts. Sophie will share something short to read in advance of the meeting, we will have a short presentation, and then Q&A and discussion.

[2] DH-Cult Mini Conference. Press the link, read the program and sign up onsite or online 

[3] Yuri, Bizzoni, and Feldkamp Pascale. 2024. ‘Sentiment Analysis for Literary Texts: Hemingway as a Case-Study’. Journal of Data Mining & Digital Humanities NLP4DH (April).

[4] The Preface to Ted Underwood’s 2019 book Distant Horizons : Digital Evidence and Literary Change. University of Chicago Press, 2019

 

The Digital Humanities Discussion Group is organised by Joanna Beaufoy, PhD Fellow at Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, and please reach out to her by email for more information. 


Spring 2024

During spring 2024 the Digital Humanities Discussion Group meets on these dates in room 24.2.62.

The meetings take place in English.

  • Friday February 23. 1 pm - 2 pm. [1] 
  • Friday March 22. 1 pm - 2 pm. [2]
  • Friday April 24. 1 pm - 2 pm.[3]

The meetings are just one hour, and they are an easy way to get into regularly discussing peer-reviewed DH work. An article is chosen for each meeting and is examined from these three points, 15 minutes each:

  • Discussion of the methodologies used in the analyses
  • Other than the data and methodologies, what is “DH” about this paper? (i.e. what is this journal looking for?)
  • Is there anything from the paper we could use for our own research? (roundtable)

The Digital Humanities Discussion Group is organised by Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Associate Professor at the Department of English, German and Romance Languages, whom you are welcome to contact for more information.

Reading list

[1] Xiao, R. & T. McEnery (2006). Collocation, Semantic Prosody, and Near Synonymy: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Journal of Applied Linguistics 27(1): 103–129

[2] Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir. 2022. ‘Retranslation and Online Reader Response: Le Petit Prince in Turkey in the Twenty-First Century’. In Retranslation and Reception: Studies in a European Context, 49:41–65. Approaches to Translation Studies. Boston, United States: Brill.

[3] Reich, J. A. (2015). Old methods and new technologies: Social media and shifts in power in qualitative research. Ethnography, 16(4), 394–415.

Jungnickel, K. (2017). Making ‘Ournet not the Internet’: An Ethnography of Home-Brew High-Tech Practices in Suburban Australia. In Hjorth, L., Horst, H., Galloway, A., & Bell, G. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography. Routledge.


Autumn 2023

During autumn 2023 the Digital Humanities Discussion Group meets on these dates in room 24.2.62.

The meetings take place in English.

  • Friday August 25 1 pm - 2 pm. [1]
  • Friday October  27 1 pm - 2 pm. [2]
  • Friday November 24 1 pm - 2 pm.[3]
  • Friday  22 December 1 pm - 2 pm. [4]

The meetings are just one hour, and they are an easy way to get into regularly discussing peer-reviewed DH work. An article is chosen for each meeting and is examined from these three points, 15 minutes each:

  • Discussion of the methodologies used in the analyses
  • Other than the data and methodologies, what is “DH” about this paper? (i.e. what is this journal looking for?)
  • Is there anything from the paper we could use for our own research? (roundtable)

The Digital Humanities Discussion Group is organised by Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Associate Professor at the Department of English, German and Romance Languages, whom you are welcome to contact for more information.

Reading list 

[1] Dahl, Christian: 'Two Armies fly in...' : Battle scenes in English Renaissance theatre. Orbis Litterarum, Volume 78, No. 5, 2023, pp. 368-383. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/oli.12404

[2] Kallenbach, U. & A. Lawaetz (2023). Levels of presence in the drama text: Between close and distant reading. Orbis Litterarum 78 (5): 401-420. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/oli.12399

[3] Ahnert, R.S.E. Ahnert, C.N. Coleman & S.B. Weingart (2021). The Network Turn: Changing Perspective in the Humanities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://soeg.kb.dk/permalink/45KBDK_KGL/1pioq0f/alma99123649154905763 (it has been suggested that we read one chapter from this book, but a specific chapter has not been proposed)

[4] McEnery, A. & H. Baker (2016). Corpus Linguistics and 17th-Century Prostitution: Computational Linguistics and History. London: Bloomsbury. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31700


Spring 2023

During spring 2023 the Digital Humanities Discussion Group meets on these dates in room 24.2.63.

  • Wednesday 1st March, 12-13 [1]
  • Friday 14th April 13-14 [2]
  • Friday 12th May 13-14 [3]

The meetings are just one hour, and they are an easy way to get into regularly discussing peer-reviewed DH work. An article is chosen for each meeting and is examined from these three points, 15 minutes each:

  • Discussion of the methodologies used in the analyses
  • Other than the data and methodologies, what is “DH” about this paper? (i.e. what is this journal looking for?)
  • Is there anything from the paper we could use for our own research? (roundtable)

The Digital Humanities Discussion Group is organised by Joanna Beaufoy, PhD Fellow at Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, and please reach out to her by email for more information. 


Reading list 
[1] Karlińska, Agnieszka. “The Art of Nerves: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Drama at the Turn of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36.1 (2021): 122–137. Web.
 
[2] Viola, Lorella, and Jaap Verheul. “Mining Ethnicity: Discourse-Driven Topic Modelling of Immigrant Discourses in the USA, 1898–1920.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 35.4 (2020): 921–943. Web.

[3] We will read two “manifestos” for Digital Humanities: