Cambridge Digital Humanities course timetable
March 2023
| Fri 3 |
This Methods Workshop will introduce advanced techniques used for the digitisation and preservation of archival material. The first workshop will introduce the following topics:
Completing the workshop will give participants a good understanding of archival photography best practices. You will gain a strong professional vocabulary to discuss imaging and a toolkit to assess image quality. A second session, bookable separately, will focus on how to adopt those principles to the projects chosen by the participants. This will cover learning a practical approach to taking images fit for purpose in any conditions with available resources. It may also address any more advanced imaging topics such as image stitching, Optical Character Recognition, Multispectral Imaging, or photogrammetry if these are in the interest of the participants. It will also be an opportunity to visit the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library. |
| Mon 6 |
Following the introductory session, this second session will focus on how to adopt the principles to the projects chosen by the participants. This will cover learning a practical approach to taking images fit for purpose in any conditions with available resources. It may also address more advanced imaging topics such as image stitching, Optical Character Recognition, Multispectral Imaging, or photogrammetry if these are in the interest of the participants. It will also be an opportunity to visit the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library. |
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CDH Methods | Seeing the Database Differently: Qualitative Data Analysis in Cultural Heritage
Finished
Convenor: Orla Delaney (CDH Methods Fellow) What does it mean to prioritise small data over big data? Cultural heritage datasets, such as museum databases and digital archives, seem to resist the quantitative methods we usually associate with data science work, asking to be read and explored rather than aggregated and analysed. This workshop provides participants with a non-statistical toolkit that will enable them to approach, critique, and tell the story of a cultural heritage dataset. Together we will consider approaches to the database from the history of science and technology, media archaeology, and digital ethnography. This will be done alongside an overview of practical considerations relevant to databasing in the sector, such as standards like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics), specific technologies like linked data, and the results of recent projects aiming to criticise and diversify the underpinning technologies of cultural heritage databases. This workshop is aimed both at cultural heritage professionals and students, and at data science researchers interested in introducing a qualitative approach to their work. |
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| Wed 8 |
This project begins from the premise that ‘transparency’ is not clear at all. Transparency is historically mediated, culturally constructed, and ideologically complex. Understood expansively, transparency is enmeshed with a variety of functions and associations, having been mobilised as a political call to action; a design methodology; a radical practice of digital disruption; an ideological tool of surveillance; a corporate strategy of diversion; an aesthetics of obfuscation; a cultural paradigm; a programming protocol; a celebration of Enlightenment rationality; a tactic for spatialising data; an antidote to computational black boxing; an ethical cliché; and more. Across two workshops, we will explore the multidimensionality and intractability of transparency and investigate how the demand for more of it—in our algorithms, computational systems, and culture more broadly—can encode assumptions about the liberational capacity of restoring representation to the invisible. As a group we will conduct a survey of transparency and its political ramifications to digital culture by learning about its conceptual genealogies; interrogating its relevance to art and architecture; questioning its limits as an ethical imperative; and mapping it as a contemporary strategy of anti/mediation. Drawing on a combination of artworks, historical texts, cultural touchstones, and moving images, these workshops will give participants an opportunity to attend to transparency’s complex configurations within contemporary culture through a media theoretical lens. This project is designed to facilitate collaborative study; foster inter-disciplinary discourse; promote experimental learning; and develop a more theoretically nuanced and historically grounded starting point for critiquing transparency and its operations within digital culture. |
| Mon 13 |
Following the introductory session, this second session will focus on how to adopt the principles to the projects chosen by the participants. This will cover learning a practical approach to taking images fit for purpose in any conditions with available resources. It may also address more advanced imaging topics such as image stitching, Optical Character Recognition, Multispectral Imaging, or photogrammetry if these are in the interest of the participants. It will also be an opportunity to visit the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library. |
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Convenor: Estara Arrant (CDH Methods Fellow) This methods workshop will teach students three powerful machine learning algorithms appropriate for Humanities research projects. These algorithms are designed to help you identify and explore meaningful patterns and correlations in your research material and are appropriate for descriptive, qualitative data sets of almost any size. These algorithms are applicable to virtually any Humanities field or research question.
This workshop will specifically cover the following: Determining when your research could benefit from machine learning analysis. Designing a good methodology and running the analysis. Interpreting the results and determining if they are meaningful. Producing a useful visualisation (graphic) of the results. Communicating the findings to other scholars in the Humanities in an accessible way. Students will actively implement a small research project using a practice dataset and are encouraged to try out the methods in their current research. They will learn the basics of running the analysis in R’s powerful programming language. |
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| Tue 28 |
Convenor: Mary Chester-Kadwell - Lead Research Software Engineer, Cambridge Digital Humanities Please note this workshop has limited spaces and an application process in place. Application forms should be completed by noon, Sunday, 12 March 2023. Successful applicants will be notified by the end-of-day Tuesday, 14 March 2023. This course introduces best practices and techniques to help you better manage your code and data, and develop your project into a usable, sustainable, and reproducible workflow for research. Developing your coding practice is an ongoing process throughout your career. This intermediate course is aimed at students and staff who use coding in research, or plan on starting such a project soon. We present an introduction to a range of best practices and techniques to help you better manage your code and data, and develop your project into a usable, sustainable, and reproducible workflow. All the examples and exercises will be in Python. If you are interested in attending this course, please fill in the application form. Please ensure you are logged onto your University Google account to access the form further help here |
April 2023
| Mon 24 |
This in-person workshop will provide an accessible, non-technical introduction to Machine Learning systems, aimed primarily at graduate students and researchers in the humanities, arts and social sciences. Key topics covered in the sessions will include:
During the session participants will be encouraged to work through practical exercises in image classification. No prior knowledge of programming is required. Participants wishing to run the experiments for themselves will need access to a laptop, but no special software is required, just an up-to-date web browser and an internet connection. We will be using Google Colab for the text generation experiments which you have access to via your Raven log-in. The image classification experiments will require a GitHub account ([sign up here https://github.com/]) |
May 2023
| Wed 10 |
Speaker: Mark Algee-Hewitt, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Stanford Literary Lab. About this Methods workshop At the heart of many of the current computational models of language usage, from generative A.I. to recommendation engines, are large language models that relate hundreds of thousands, or millions, of words to each other based on shared contexts. Mysterious products of complex modelling algorithms, these objects raise a number of practical (and ethical) questions for Humanities scholars: How are these language models created? What kinds of relationships does their math encode? How do biases in the corpus affect the model? And how can we effectively use them to answer humanities-based questions? In this workshop, we will explore these questions using a medium-sized language embedding model trained on a corpus of novels. Using approachable code in the R software environment, participants will learn how to manipulate a model, assess similarities and difference within it, visualise relationships between words and even train their own embeddings. |
| Wed 24 |
This month we are calling on the expertise of students and staff here at Cambridge to bring underrepresented histories ‘out of the shadows’ and into the light on Wikipedia. No prior Wiki experience is required! We will host an online training session at 11am on 17 May to get you started. This session will also be recorded and made available. On 24 May we will host our edit-a-thon at the University Library. This drop-in event will allow you to access support throughout the day to help improve and expand Wikipedia’s content. Hosted jointly by Doing History in Public, Cambridge University Libraries, and Cambridge Digital Humanities, with the assistance of Wikimedia UK, we hope to get as many new pages created and edits made as possible. Refreshments will also be provided to fuel your efforts. If you cannot be in Cambridge on 24 May, we will also do our best to enable you to interact remotely. You can also follow updates on Twitter via the hashtag #OOTSwiki. |
October 2023
| Wed 25 |
This CDH Basics session explores the lifecycle of a digital research project across the stages of design, data capture, transformation, and analysis, presentation and preservation. It introduces tactics for embedding ethical research principles and practices at each stage of the research process.
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November 2023
| Wed 1 |
This session provides a brief introduction to different methods for capturing bulk data from online sources or via agreement with data collection holders, including Application Programme Interfaces (APIs). We will address issues of data provenance, exceptions to copyright for text and data-mining, and discuss good practice in managing and working with data that others have created.
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| Mon 6 |
Convenor: Dr Estara Arrant (Cambridge University Library) This session is aimed at researchers who have never done any coding before. We will explore basic principles and approaches to navigating and working with code, using the popular programming language Python. Participants will use the Jupyter Notebooks platform to learn how to analyse texts. This will provide participants with a working foundation in the fundamentals of coding in Humanities research. The software we will use is free to download and compatible with most computers, and we will provide support in installation and setup before the class. |
| Wed 8 |
CDH Basics: Transforming your data
Finished
Data which you have captured rather than created yourself is likely to need cleaning up before you can use it effectively. This short session will introduce you to the basic principles of creating structured datasets and walk you through some case studies in data cleaning with OpenRefine, a powerful open source tool for working with messy data.
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| Mon 13 |
CDH Methods: Virtual and augmented reality as new material for teaching, learning and research
Finished
Convenor: Dr Eleanor Dare (CDH Methods Fellow) This Methods Workshop will invite participants to originate innovative research methods using virtual and augmented reality technologies underpinned by theoretical and pedagogic understandings. The session is conceived in recognition of an increasing interest in using virtual and extended reality (VR and XR) to create collaborative research spaces that span different locations, time zones, and spatiality. Such spaces might be used to investigate the impact of design, architecture and location on education or new ways to teach an array of subjects, from language to mathematics to performance, AI ethics and music. About the convenor: Eleanor is currently the Co-Convenor for Arts, Creativity and Education at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, they are also the Senior Teaching Associate: Educational Technologies, Arts and Creativity, lecturing and supervising on MPHIL Arts, Creativities and Education, MPhil Knowledge, Power and Politics, and MEd Transforming Practice. Eleanor is module lead for AI and Education, a Personal and Professional Development course at Cambridge. Eleanor Dare’s research addresses the implications of digital technology and virtuality as a material for collaboration, critical-educational games development, performance, worldbuilding and pedagogic experimentation. Eleanor has been involved in several AHRC/EPSRC/ESRC/Arts Council/British Council funded projects investigating aspects of virtual and extended reality as well as projects with the Mozilla Foundation (AI-Musement/Monstrous 2022-2023), Theatre in the Mill Bradford (Bussing Out, 2022) and the Big Telly Theatre Company (via the Arts Council of Northern Ireland) for Rear Windows, forthcoming. |
| Wed 15 |
The impact of well-crafted data visualisations has been well-documented historically. Florence Nightingale famously used charts to make her case for hospital hygiene in the Crimean War, while Dr John Snow’s bar charts of cholera deaths in London helped convince the authorities of the water-borne nature of the disease. However, as information designer Alberto Cairo notes, charts can also lie. This introductory Basics session presents the basic principles of data visualisation for researchers who are new to working with quantitative data.
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After the fantastic success of our last Wikipedia edit-a-thon in May, we are once again calling on the expertise of students and staff here at Cambridge to bring underrepresented histories ‘out of the shadows’ and into the light on Wikipedia. No prior Wiki experience is required! We will host an online training session at 11am on 15 November to get you set up. On 22 November we will host our edit-a-thon at the University Library. This will be a drop-in event where you can access support throughout the day to help improve and expand Wikipedia’s content. Hosted jointly by Doing History in Public, Cambridge University Libraries, and Cambridge Digital Humanities, with the assistance of Wikimedia UK's 'Connected Heritage Team', we hope to get as many new pages created and edits made as possible. Those who can join us for the day on 22 November will receive a free voucher to use in the UL Tea Room on the day! If you cannot be in Cambridge on 22 November, we will do our best to enable you to interact remotely. You can also follow updates on Twitter via the hashtag #OOTSwiki. |
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| Mon 20 |
This Methods Workshop explores primary data collection using digital and online qualitative methods. Teaching methods for detailed assessment of the suitability of online platforms for the collection of research data. Considering not only general ethical issues, privacy, encryption, terms and conditions but also inclusivity for neurodivergent and vulnerable participants. |
| Tue 21 |
This Methods Workshop will introduce advanced techniques used for the digitisation and preservation of archival material. The first workshop will introduce the following topics:
Completing the workshop will give participants a good understanding of archival photography best practices. You will gain a strong professional vocabulary to discuss imaging and a toolkit to assess image quality. A second session, bookable separately, will focus on how to adopt those principles to the projects chosen by the participants. This will cover learning a practical approach to taking images fit for purpose in any conditions with available resources. It may also address any more advanced imaging topics such as image stitching, Optical Character Recognition, Multispectral Imaging, or photogrammetry if these are in the interest of the participants. It will also be an opportunity to visit the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library. |
| Wed 22 |
After the fantastic success of our last Wikipedia edit-a-thon in May, we are once again calling on the expertise of students and staff here at Cambridge to bring underrepresented histories ‘out of the shadows’ and into the light on Wikipedia. No prior Wiki experience is required! We will host an online training session at 11am on 15 November to get you set up. On 22 November we will host our edit-a-thon at the University Library. This will be a drop-in event where you can access support throughout the day to help improve and expand Wikipedia’s content. Hosted jointly by Doing History in Public, Cambridge University Libraries, and Cambridge Digital Humanities, with the assistance of Wikimedia UK's 'Connected Heritage Team', we hope to get as many new pages created and edits made as possible. Those who can join us for the day on 22 November will receive a free voucher to use in the UL Tea Room on the day! If you cannot be in Cambridge on 22 November, we will do our best to enable you to interact remotely. You can also follow updates on Twitter via the hashtag #OOTSwiki. |
| Mon 27 |
Interactive Fiction (IF) stories let readers decide which paths the story should follow, featuring non-linear narrative design. The discipline combines the excitement of post-structuralist narratives with the power of creative coding, making it a perfect introduction for participants more familiar with one field than the other. In this workshop, led by Methods Fellow Claire Carroll, we’ll explore both parser-based (rooted in reader instructions and terminal response) and choice-based (hyperlink or multiple choice-driven) IF and work together to write our own interactive fiction. The workshop will also introduce participants to the passionate IF community, which offers advice and support to experienced writers and newcomers alike. |
| Tue 28 |
Following the introductory Methods Workshops, held on 21st November 2023, this session will focus on how to adopt the principles to the projects chosen by the participants. This will cover learning a practical approach to taking images fit for purpose in any conditions with available resources. It may also address any more advanced imaging topics such as image stitching, Optical Character Recognition, Multispectral Imaging, or photogrammetry if these are in the interest of the participants. It will also be an opportunity to visit the Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library. |
| Wed 29 |
CDH Basics: Sustaining your data
Finished
Ensuring long-term access to digital data is often a difficult task: both hardware and code decay much more rapidly than many other means of information storage. Digital data created in the 1980s is frequently unreadable, whereas books and manuscripts written in the 980s are still legible. This session explores good practice in data preservation and software sustainability and looks at what you need to do to ensure that the data you don’t want to keep is destroyed.
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December 2023
| Mon 4 |
This in-person workshop will provide an accessible, non-technical introduction to Machine Learning systems, aimed primarily at graduate students and researchers in the humanities, arts and social sciences. No prior knowledge of programming is required. We will focus on the technical, ethical and societal implications of embedding Machine Learning systems for classifying and generating texts and images into the world of work, with a particular emphasis on the impact of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT. We will explore these text generation systems in the context of longer histories of AI, including the ‘deep learning revolution’ in image-based Machine Learning systems which laid the foundations for popular text-to-image generation models such as StableDiffusion. Participants will have the chance to both learn more about how AI works and also discuss what the embedding of such systems into labour processes, management structures, resource allocation systems may mean for how society works. |
| Tue 5 |
Introduction to the Command Line
Finished
This session introduces the command line, sometimes also known as the shell or the terminal, to humanities researchers. No prior knowledge of the command line or programming of any kind is required or expected from attendees. A basic understanding of how to use the command line provides a step change in how productive you can be when working with data or text files, particularly large number of files or very large files, which can be hard to manipulate in a graphical interface. Some tools and programs can only be used from the command line, and this session aims to give you the confidence to work with them. In the session we primarily look at seven George Eliot novels and a comparative set of seven Dickens novels (about 3.4 million words in total) but this session should be of use to any humanities researchers working with text collections and the principles have far broader applicability. We'll focus on running programs which come pre-installed on Mac and Linux, and which can be easily added to Windows. We'll combine these programs in productive ways, discuss how to discover and use the options for each, how to send results to files, and how to work efficiently on the command line so you don't have to retype or remember everything you've done. |