DH/DS Communities

Getting involved in the digital humanities community is a great way to learn about new projects and scholarship, meet collaborators from other disciplines, and find venues for your own work. There are numerous digital humanities and digital scholarship groups to choose from, ranging from local efforts on campus to international organizations.

Harvard

  • Arts and Humanities Research Computing, informally known as DARTH (Digital Arts and Humanities), is the go-to Harvard group for Arts & Humanities faculty looking for a partner on a digital project. We provide consultation, technical development, and project management for faculty digital research initiatives at any stage in the project lifecycle. DARTH staff are also key members of the DSSG (below) and frequently run digital methods seminars and workshops through that organization.
  • The Digital Scholarship Support Group (DSSG) brings together Harvard faculty and staff with technical and pedagogical expertise to support faculty, students, and staff interested in incorporating digital methods into their teaching and research. The DSSG organizes a year-round seminar series to provide training and instruction in digital methods; maintains digital scholarship infrastructures, such as Scalar as a Service and Omeka as a Service; runs regular office hours and consultations; and sponsors the Discovery Series (below).
  • The Harvard Discovery Series brings scholars on the frontiers of digital knowledge-making to a Harvard audience in an intimate and interactive setting. From an archaeologist reconstructing tombs in virtual reality to scholars challenging power differentials through data feminism, these presentations demonstrate the unifying potential of digital methods and tools in scholarly and pedagogical pursuits. Check out the current calendar of events.
  • metaLAB @ Harvard is an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities. The metaLAB project series publishes book length monographs and essay collections that sit between media history and speculative design. metaLAB is an institutional unit within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
  • Numerous other Harvard groups whose primary directive is not digital humanities also support or engage in digital scholarship. The DSSG maintains a list of Harvard DS organizations, and the Research Support website maintains a list of services (subgrouped by provider). Check these out see if there is a team in your area, or get in touch with DARTH with questions.

Ivy Plus

Boston Area

  • The Boston DH Consortium is an informal association of educational and cultural institutions in New England committed to the collaborative development of teaching, learning, and scholarship in the digital humanities and computational social sciences. In 2019, Harvard hosted the first Boston Area Digital Scholarship Symposium, and MIT is scheduled to host the next symposium in the 2021-22 academic year. Join the Boston DH listserv for community announcements.
  • The Boston DH Hub Slack, organized by Northeastern’s NULab, is a collaborative community for graduate students, recent graduates, and early career researchers doing DH work in Greater Boston. The DH Hub Slack is an informal space for members to network across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Members will join a community dedicated to sharing research and methods, working together to build digital skillsets, explore professional development opportunities, and discuss methods of digital pedagogy and career aspirations in an informal way. Sign up at https://forms.gle/zR61QoA4zSxU4fWh9.
  • Other Boston and New England universities are also doing fantastic work in the digital humanities space. Here’s a selection of of their DH/DS groups:

Beyond

  • The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) promotes and supports digital research and teaching across all arts and humanities disciplines, acting as a community-based advisory force, and supporting excellence in research, publication, collaboration and training. ADHO host the major Digital Humanities conference each year, and represents numerous constituent organizations primarily organized by region.
  • The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is a major professional society for the digital humanities which supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH is the US member of ADHO.
  • International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) refers to both a set of open standards for improving and sharing digitized collections (images, deep zoom, A/V time-based playback, annotation, and more) and the community of users and developers who work within this ecosystem. The IIIF community is comprised of and driven by libraries, museums, archives, software companies, and other organizations working together to create, test, refine, implement, and promote the IIIF specifications. Harvard is an active member of the IIIF community, and was scheduled to host the main IIIF conference in 2020. If you work on visual materials, this is a group to check out!
  • The Digital Humanities Slack provides a Slack workspace for the broad DH community. Join here or check out the code of conduct for more info.
  • Twitter is an excellent place to hear from the wide DH/DS scholarly community. It’s the social network of choice for most academics. Check out DARTH’s Twitter lists as a starting point for accounts to follow.
  • HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) is an interdisciplinary community of humanists, artists, social scientists, scientists, and technologists changing the way we teach and learn.  Our 16,000+ members from over 400+ affiliate organizations share ideas, news, tools, research, insights, pedagogy, methods, and projects – including Digital Humanities and other born-digital scholarship – and collaborate on various HASTAC initiatives.