Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (ARTS30003)

This subject is about how knowledge production and dissemination in Humanities & Social Sciences disciplines has been transformed by the digital revolution. It examines the new possibilities opened up by the creation of vast collections of spatial, textual and visual data, and new capacities to visualise data and knowledge in meaningful ways. The subject introduces students to the scope and ambition of quantitative and qualitative social research in the digital social sciences and to exciting work in the emerging discipline of Digital Humanities, as well as to issues of digitised cultural heritage.

We will study the impact of techniques such as social network analysis, automated information extraction and geospatial analysis within and across disciplines. Attention will be given to the possibilities of analysing big data in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but also to ways of deploying digital tools for fine-grained qualitative analysis. We ask about how these macro and micro analyses can be combined in new ways and how the critical questions and frameworks of the Humanities and Social Sciences can shape and transform the deployment of technical skills.