Events

DH Seminar: Data-Driven Hermeneutics: Historical Judgement in Digital History

Digital Humanities Lab seminar series. Melodee Wood (née Beals) (Loughborough University): "Data-Driven Hermeneutics: Historical Judgement in Digital History". Location: online.

Event details

Abstract

On the surface, Big Data seems an obvious and rewarding new frontier for historians, with digitisation offering new insights on a grand scale. However, as an observational rather than experimental discipline, and with datasets particularly prone to unfillable gaps owing to labyrinthine copyright claims and an uneven electronic public domain, data-driven research can sometimes appear impossible. Yet, the sentiments behind open data and reproducibility are part of the very fabric of the humanities, with its tradition of documented hermeneutics and thoroughly provenanced evidence. This talk will discuss the history of reproducibility in the humanities and how we might build upon these rich traditions in an age of data-driven results.

Dr Melodee Wood is a Senior Lecturer in Digital History in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK. Her research explores the ways in which the movement of peoples and ideas intersect and the practical traces of imagined communities within the Anglophone World. As an advocate of the Digital Humanities and Open Research, she works to develop and promote computer-aided methodologies through her roles as history editor for the Open Library of Humanities and Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute. Her latest project, The Atlas of Digitised Newspapers and Metadata brought together these two loves by tracing the history and nature of digitised newspapers collections around the world to help researcher build projects across national and linguistic borders.

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https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/96993356454?pwd=czRTRS9MNWpFc2RGVnQzeW5yZzVKUT09

Meeting ID: 969 9335 6454
Password: 135539