Dear colleagues,

With apologies for cross posting. We are delighted to announce the May programme of the Sloane Lab and HDSM (Humanities Data Science & Methodology) Darmstadt online seminar series: Critical and creative engagement with historical data.

This seminar invites international speakers whose work is situated at the intersections of collections as data, cataloguing histories and critical archival studies, heritage infrastructures, critical digital heritage, and information science.

To register and view the full programme please visit Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/critical-and-creative-engagement-with-histori...

7th May, 15:30 BST - Whirling around a digital future – Dr Bethany Johnstone, UCL Dept of Information Studies

This paper begins by outlining research conducted before the pandemic that investigated the reality of a digital turn in dance. The research explored whether the digitization of dance archival content could offer dance archives a way to engage with online audiences, thus increasing the visibility and awareness of dance archive content to a newly established online community. The paper continues by providing new insights into how user behaviour can guide the sector's progress. It shares the findings from two different research projects conducted at University College London as the world begins to move towards a post-pandemic landscape where dance archives can no longer ignore the prospect of their own digital turn. The paper explores how dance archives can plan for a digital future while also satisfying the user’s quest for online dance performances.

14th May, 15:30 BST - Leveraging XR for the Promotion of Art and Cultural Heritage Dr Stella Sylaiou - International Hellenic University

This presentation describes the use of digital tools in the development of platforms for the promotion of arts and culture, with emphasis on the framework used for categorizing and contextualising artworks/artefacts. The presentation draws on the CREAMS project, which employs XR as a fulcrum for enhancing more meaningful engagement with contemporary art virtual exhibitions through curatorial innovations as well as the inclusion of multimodal contextual material. Frameworks for creating a nexus of resources that add context to exhibited art are developed, with respective data classification approaches. Moreover, we will discuss the inclusion of artefacts’ aspects related to intangible heritage, such as pertinent narratives, histories and functions.

21st May, 15:30 BST - Anti-Colonial Annotations of Sloane Jamaican references – Dr Dorothy Kyagaba Sebbowa - Sloane Lab Community Fellow / Makerere University

This project draws on the guide to the Sloane Database produced by the Natural History Museum before the Sloane Lab project as the key unit of analysis. It seeks to reinstate the experience of enslaved people and the history of slavery as the prism through which to explore and understand this data by examining the historicities, technologies and methodologies through the lens of Sloane's involvement in the local history of Jamaica and African enslavement. This project was prompted by the absence of this context in the publicly accessible data provided by the Natural History Museum about the Sloane Database prior to the Sloane Lab. The project inquiries into the ways that digitally mediated annotations can support the articulation and inscription of previously ignored/ marginalized anti-colonial readings of historical and curatorial-mediated archives. Historical hermeneutical methodological lens was employed to guide the critical perspectives and analysis.

28th May, 15:30 BST - Enframing narratives & post-Fordist Global South Digital Humanities ecosystem - Arjun Sanyal - University of Himachal Pradesh

In this presentation, I will expound a conceptual framework, informed by Paul Ricœur’s (1992) hermeneutical construction of “narrative identity” and Henry Giroux’s (1993) notion of Border Pedagogy, for rethinking the DH workflow, transnationally, for deconstructing Western DH grand narratives and creating counter-texts. By blending Ricœur’s hermeneutical technique, collaboratively, with digital multimedia storytelling tools and Giroux’s idea of Border Pedagogy, it is posited, will enable the re-contextualization of computational narratives, facilitated by GLAM professionals re-envisioning themselves as "border crossers" to reinforce the extant DH epistemic milieux, sociotechnically. In conclusion, this conceptual edifice is an exercise in participatory praxis, as a counterpoint to the techno-deterministic DH research ecosystem, for enabling intercultural dialogue and envisioning a new sociology of knowledge.

Best wishes Marco

Dr Marco Humbel (he/him) Research Fellow in Participatory Research and Collections as Data UCLDH Associate Director (ECR) Department of Information Studies, UCL Email: marco.humbel.17@ucl.ac.ukmailto:marco.humbel.17@ucl.ac.uk Web: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/67801-marco-humbel/about