About Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities at Duke University

The Digital Humanities Community at Duke promotes new ways to engage in and learn about the use of technology in humanities scholarship. This site aggregates information from various programs and initiatives around campus. The Digital Humanities Initiative @ the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, and Duke Libraries all provide programming and support.

This website showcases completed and ongoing digital humanities Duke projects, spaces, and activities; promote workshops, events, and activities; and serve as a portal for exploring technology solutions for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting humanities scholarship.

Our expanded idea of “digital humanities” includes digital transformations of scholarly practice and dissemination within the humanities, opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative teaching made possible by digital tools and methods, creative and experimental uses of technology for scholarly communications, and critical study of computational media and digital culture globally.

Core Principles 

  • teaching/research/outreach connections through courses and projects
  • analog and traditional, disciplinary approaches to scholarship facilitated by the digital
  • innovative approaches to research, presentation, and discovery make possible by the digital
  • information/data sciences connections
  • critical media/tech studies and theories informing the work
  • art-science and media collaborations in teaching, research, and the arts
  • external project collaborations and partnerships: local, regional, and global

Benefits of Digital Humanities

  • Integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches - You can present and interlink digitized text, images, and time-based media with maps, timelines, data, and visualizations.
  • Content management and data analysis - You can mine, map and re-organize the resources – whatever you need to uncover trends, themes and key learnings.
  • Quicker access to information through digital access - This means more people can review, see and learn from the project. You are also able to more easily search through the data, combine different data sources, hyperlink to relevant background materials, and more.
  • Enhanced teaching  - Digital Humanities helps students learn by being able to see more, experience more, and collaborate together.
  • Improved collaboration - Digital resources and environments can provide a common plaform for project development and group-sourcing of materials, and facilitate local, regional and global partnerships.
  • Public impact - The projects extend beyond the classroom and make a public impact.  Not only does this help show the value of the study of Humanities, but digital projects can also help inform and engage those outside the university setting.

Digital Humanities in the Triangle

On top of the events, courses, and initiatives at Duke, there are numerous opportunities to engage with DH communities in the Triangle.

  • Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative: a multi-year NEH funded initiative, the CDHI offers opportunities for digital research and training at graduate, postdoctoral, and faculty levels.
  • CHAT Festival: The Collaborations in Humanities, Arts, Technology Festival (CHAT) is a bi-annual gathering of scholars, students, and digital media arts practitioners in the region. It is alternately hosted around the Triangle.

Many of these initiatives are coordinated among the Digital Humanities Collaborative of North Carolina, a collaboration among NC State, UNC, Duke, and the National Humanities Center. The group supports an array of shared events and resources in the region. Its core initiatives include: graduate training opportunities across institutions in the Triangle, including DH certificates and shared courses; guest speakers, seminars, and conferences in the region, from library workshops to THATCamps and the biannual CHAT Festival; and helping to connect researchers in the region as a clearinghouse for projects, contacts, and scholarly opportunities.

Digital Humanities in the World

(click on the section headers below to learn more)

Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations

ADHO logo

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), is a digital humanities umbrella organization formed in 2005 to coordinate the activities of several regional DH organizations, referred to as constituent organizations. ADHO's constituent organizations are the European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH), the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH/SCHN), centerNet, the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH), the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (JADH) and Humanistica, the french-speaking association for Digital Humanities.

Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH)

ACH logo

The Association for Computers and Humanities (ACH) is the primary international professional society for digital humanities. ACH was founded in 1978. The organization supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH is based in the United States, and has an international membership. ACH is a founding member of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), a co-originator of the Text Encoding Initiative, and a co-sponsor of an annual conference.

centerNet

 

centerNet logo

centerNet is an international network of digital humanities centers formed for cooperative and collaborative action to benefit digital humanities and allied fields in general, and centers as humanities cyberinfrastructure in particular. Anchored by its new publication DHCommons, centerNet enables individual DH Centers to network internationally — sharing and building on projects, tools, staff, and expertise.

HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory

 

hastac logo

​HASTAC is an interdisciplinary community of humanists, artists, social scientists, scientists, and technologists that are changing the way we teach and learn.  Our 13,000+ members from over 400+ affiliate organizations share news, tools, research, insights, pedagogy, methods, and projects--including Digital Humanities and other born-digital scholarship--and collaborate on various HASTAC initiatives. HASTAC offers a Scholars fellowship program, an innovative student-driven community of graduate and undergraduate students. 

Global Outlook::Digital Humanities (GO::DH)

 

Global Outlook logo

Global Outlook::Digital Humanities (GO::DH) is a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO). The purpose of GO::DH is to help break down barriers that hinder communication and collaboration among researchers and students of the Digital Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Heritage sectors in high, mid, and low income economies.

Digital Library Federation (DLF)

 

DLF logo

DLF strives to be a robust, diverse, and ever more inclusive community of practitioners who advance research, learning, social justice, and the public good through the creative design and wise application of digital library technologies. DLF serves as a resource and catalyst for collaboration among its institutional members, and all who are invested in the success of libraries, museums, and archives in the digital age.

Lists of more organizations