The Call for Presentations: Global Digital Humanities

CfP: Global Digital Humanities

Workshop Event at the University of Helsinki and Aalto University (Helsinki), 29-30 May 2017

Organizer: Prof. Dr. Xenia Zeiler, South Asian Studies, University of Helsinki
Collaborators: “DIG_IN: Digital Humanities Education Initiative Finland-India” (CIMO collaboration between South Asian Studies and HELDIG at HY, Aalto University and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore/India), “Deep Learning and Semantic Fields in Akkadian Texts” (University of Helsinki)

As Digital Humanities becomes increasingly recognized as a significant discipline and embedded in university curricula internationally, it is instructive to recognize that most scholarship relevant to the discipline is still predominantly from Anglo-American countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The event aims to demonstrate how diverse cultural, intellectual and linguistic contexts can and even necessarily must fruitfully contribute to shape the future direction of the discipline.

The 2 day seminar will be held at HY and Aalto University, and invites interested researchers from all levels (junior and advanced) to present and/or discuss their work, and students to take part. Thus, it will bring together researchers working on DH relevant themes beyond European and North American contexts, offer a platform for exchange on themes, methods and approaches, and in general, enhance the awareness for and visibility of DH research located beyond the hegemonic context. The reasoning for this is twofold: firstly, it is in the spirit of DH to encourage collaboration, remixing, and remediating, and secondly, to allow for a wider audience to access diverse culturally and locally inflected versions of DH in a quest to enlarge the scope of the discipline beyond the hegemonic.

If you are working on a DH relevant/related theme beyond European and North American contexts – be it with material and/or methodologies which originated beyond ‘Western’ contexts, or make use of broader global approaches, please contact Xenia Zeiler (xenia.zeiler@helsinki.fi) at the latest by 5 May 2017 with a title and short abstract. The workshop will be organized as a platform for discussion and getting to know each other’s work primarily, thus also work in progress is welcome. Potential themes include (but are not limited to) Global DH as related to

  • Archaeology and History
  • Design
  • Linguistics
  • Video Games

The event is free of charge, and we look forward to a fruitful discussion.

The event is intended to have a workshop atmosphere, and also work in progress and esp. doctoral students are very welcome.

The major reason is to bring together people in the larger Helsinki region working on various aspects of DH beyond Europe, and to get to know each other. We understand DH to include not only the level of developing/applying digital tools on cultural material, but also the level of researching digital media (f.e. social media) and their interaction with society.

The deadline for submitting a note of interest and title/short abstract (~150 words) is now extended to 5th of May 2017.