Digital Academy 2023 - From Uncertainty to Action: Advancing Research with Digital Data (Digital History, Bielefeld University)

the Digital Academy once again invites you to a vital exchange on data-based research and digital methods. This year, we will particularly focus on an issue that affects the Digital Humanities on all levels: uncertainty. With her concept of “capta,” Johanna Drucker pointed out that when researchers collect and model data, they use criteria that are not objectively given. Thus, there always is a certain perspective that is forced onto our data sets, which highly influences the possibilities of analysing data. In order to be able to exploit data sets to their full potential, it is crucial for researchers to reflect on this perspectivity.

Uncertainty plays a role on various levels: How can we interpret unclear data within texts, for example ambiguous designations of people or places? In which formats are data sets available, and how does this affect working with different analysing tools?

The Digital Academy 2023 will touch upon these questions and many more. In this context, uncertainty is not supposed to be framed as something deficient that inevitably blurs data-based research within the Digital Humanities. The aim instead is to explore and develop strategies that help dealing with digital research data.

Open Space Day: Experts will report on their research projects and subsequently discuss aspects of their work with the audience. This part of the program is open to all who are interested.
Three-day workshop: The participants will get the opportunity to present and discuss their strategies for dealing with uncertainty within their own research projects. This workshop particularly aims at advanced Masters students, PhD students, and postdocs.

Your contributions (20 mins. presentation, 10 mins. discussion) may deal with all kinds of possible interpretations of uncertainty with regards to digital data. We would like you to present strategies you have been using in order to deal with uncertainty in your own projects. Besides the questions already mentioned above, other possible questions could be:

How do we create relations within databases, in order to answer particular research questions?
Which types of visualisations are particularly suitable for different research projects?
How can we combine qualitative research and hermeneutic methods?
Which theories seem to be useful in these contexts?

Based on your abstract and the discussion following your contribution during the workshop, we would like to invite you to write a blog post that will be published on the blog of Digital History@UniBielfeld. This way, we can make our results available to a broader public.

The extended deadline for submitting contributions is 10 July 2023 (23:59, MESZ). We will inform about possibilities of participation by July, 28. Further details about the programme will be published in the course of the summer.

We welcome submissions in German or English. The programme of the Digital Academy 2023 is bilingual (the Open Space day will be in English only).

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us via the following email address: digital-academy@uni-bielefeld.de.