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-histor…
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.uk<mailto:marco.humbel.17@ucl.ac.uk>
Web:
https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/67801-marco-humbel/about