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Long View Seminar – Reflecting on our First Year

By Adam Crymble, on 27 July 2021

In a year dominated by a global pandemic and both remote working and teaching, we lost many of the traditional ways that we as scholars could stay connected. One of those, the traditional extra-curricular seminar series that was a coming together space for people at different stages of their career, had to go online. And that’s just where we went.

While elements of the seminar culture have not been easy to replicate online, the shift to virtual did present some opportunities, one of which was to work collaboratively across what would otherwise be prohibitively wide distances. In this case, it was a chance for the UCLDH team to work together with colleagues at Stanford’s CESTA (Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis) to co-host the Digital Humanities Long View seminar during the spring of 2021. It was a chance to share scholarly culture, to build new bridges, and to help postgraduate students get involved in networking and professional development opportunities that were increasingly difficult to arrange during a pandemic.

Logo of the Digital Humanities Longview seminar

Logo of the Digital Humanities Longview Seminar, with a world map showing the location of each of the seminar’s speakers and of the two co-host organisations (Stanford CESTA & UCLDH).

 

The Long View for us was about understanding that research happens in context. About asking questions of how Digital Humanities (DH) got where it is today. Our seminar series explored some of the key socio-historical, political and cultural contexts of DH research as a means of building understandings of how we all ended up here and what that means for the future of the field. It’s been an opportunity for newcomers to understand how the field has developed, and for established practitioners to consider their work as part of a larger movement with competing influences, ambitions, and blindspots.

Having finished our first programme of talks, we’re incredibly pleased with the Long View series. We were grateful to host 11 wonderful speakers from five countries and three different linguistic backgrounds. We had the support of 17 different postgraduate students and early career researchers who acted as respondents to the papers and co-hosted the proceedings. And we had tremendous and engaged audiences from around the world, reaching 650 people across the series.

Some of the talks have been video recorded and remain online on the CESTA website, and we invite you to watch them if you missed them live: https://cestastanford.github.io/schedule.html

And we’re pleased to announce that we plan to continue our collaborative seminar series next year, building upon what we’ve established with our friends at Stanford.

That means we’ll once again be on the lookout for postgraduate students who want to get involved and build both their skills and professional networks. If any UCL postgraduate students or offer holders for 2021-22 would like to represent UCLDH as a postgraduate respondent at next year’s events, please contact Dr Adam Crymble directly for an informal conversation.

Finally, a huge thanks to our speakers, convenors, colleagues, and respondents, who supported this seminar: Ian Milligan (Waterloo), Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins), Zephyr Frank, Quinn Dombrowski, Mark Algee-Hewitt (Stanford), Riva Quiroga (Programming Historian), Scott Weingart (Notre Dame), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara (Colorado), Amy Earhart (Texas A&M), Valérie Schafer (Luxembourg), Jane Winters (London), Agnieszka Backman, Amanda Wilson Bergado, William Parish, Daniel Bush, Giovanna Ceserani, Laura Stokes, Anna Toledano, Victoria Rahbar, Maciej Kurzynski, Yunxin Li, Lakmali Jayasinghe, Merve Tekgurler, Mae Velloso-Lyons (CESTA); Adam Crymble, Julianne Nyhan, Lucy Stagg, Hannah Smyth, Nenna Orie Chuku, Madeline Tondi, George Cooper, Jin Gao, Malithi Alahappruna, Opher Mansour, Marco Humbel (UCL) and Urszula Pawlicka-Deger (KCL). It has been a wonderful and collegial opportunity and we valued it tremendously.

 

Seminars: Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology; A Catalogue of Digital Editions

By Simon Mahony, on 10 July 2013

digiclas

This week’s Digital Classicist seminar has a double bill with one of the speakers being a UCLDH PhD student at DIS.

Digital Classicist London & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar 2013
16:30 Friday July 12 in room STB2, Stewart House (the far side of the courtyard towards Russell Square), Senate House.

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16:30
Eleni Bozia (University of Florida)
The Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology Project

This presentation will introduce the Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology Project, a digital toolbox meant to assist individual epigraphists, archaeologists, institutions, and museums. Our project is an open-source, cross-platform web-application designed to facilitate the digital preservation, study, and electronic dissemination of ancient inscriptions and other archaeological artifacts. It allows epigraphists to digitize in 3D their squeezes using our novel cost-effective technique, which overcomes the limitations of the current methods. Also, it gives users the option to perform automatic morphological analysis and comparison between archaeological artifacts digitized in 3D, such as statues, coins, lamps, and vases.
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17:30
Greta Franzini (University College London)
A Catalogue of Digital Editions:
Towards a digital edition of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei

The oldest surviving manuscript of St Augustine’s De Civitate Dei dates back to the early fifth century, and most research on it predates the 1950s. Its much debated provenance and authorship, due to being contemporary with Augustine himself, are as intriguing as its rare palaeographical features and marginalia. I am creating a detailed catalogue of extant digital editions to examine best practice in the field of digital editions. Lessons from this catalogue will be presented to help scholars better understand the field of electronic editing, and further to inform the production of my electronic edition of De Civitate Dei.

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All are welcome

The seminars will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information, see the seminar website.

 

Seminar: Visitor experience and the digital museum

By Melissa M Terras, on 19 December 2011

On Weds 18th January at 5.00pm, UCLDH will be jointly hosting an Industry Seminar with the UCL EngD VEIV programme. Dr Robert Bud, the Principal Curator of the Science Museum, London, will be talking about the role of interactive media in constructing museum visitor’s learning narratives.

Dr Robert Bud is an historian of science, technology and medicine and Principal Curator of Medicine at the Science Museum. His research interests include the social and cultural history of penicillin and understanding of the place of science in post-war Britain.

The seminar will take place in the Malet Place Engineering Building, Room 1.20  A drink reception will be held afterwards. All are welcome.