This four-day summer school on “Digital Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences” aims at introducing undergraduate and postgraduate/researchers to a range of digital methods that are currently applied in the humanities and social sciences. Data will be viewed from different (but inextricably interconnected) perspectives, notably (a) preparation and architecture/infrastructure, (b) data treatment/analysis, and (c) societal impact and outreach. In the course of the summer school, all of these aspects will be paid attention to, both with regard to application and critical assessment. This will be done in the form of lectures with Q&A and hands-on work in interactive workshops.
COVID
Due to persistant Covid-related uncertainties (travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, partially closed campus, etc.), the organisers of the summer school have decided to shift to a programme that will take place online. We will nevertheless make sure to maximise the interactive and joyful atmosphere of the event.
Anita Auer, Lettres UNIL, dhCenter UNIL–EPFL & Ladhul
Maria Rosa Garrido Sardà, Lettres UNIL
Isaac Pante, Lettres UNIL, dhCenter UNIL–EPFL & Ladhul
Michael Piotrowski, Lettres UNIL, dhCenter UNIL–EPFL, Ladhul & PDEN
Tamsin Blaxter (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge) – Using Apps to Collect Data for Spatial and Social Linguistics: Gameification, Virality and Metadata
Sally Bushell (Lancaster) – Mapping Literature: Spatialising the Literary Work
Zsófia Demjén (University College London) – Metaphor and Framing in Cancer Discourses: A Patient Perspective
Pablo Diaz Venegaz (Lausanne) – Research Ethics
Ian Gregory (Lancaster) – GIS and the Spatial Humanities
Duncan Hay (Lancaster) – Mapping Literature: Spatialising the Literary Work
Mike Kestemont (Antwerp) – Computational Stylistics: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Counting Words
Patrick Michel & Valentin Michellod (Lausanne) – Collart-Palmyre project
Markus Neuwirth (Bruckner University Linz / EPFL) – Digital Musicology: The Challenge of Finding and Interpreting Patterns in Large Corpora Across Music History
Ross Purves (Zurich) – Doing Geography with Text
The summer school is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students/researchers from the humanities and social sciences with an interest in applying and critically assessing digital methods in their respective disciplines.
Schedule
The summer school will take place online.
At the end of the course:
- The participants will be introduced to and familiarised with a wide range of different digital methods that are currently applied in the humanities and social sciences;
- The participants will learn to apply digital methods to different/new disciplines in the interactive workshops. In that, they learn to approach data in new and dynamic ways;
- The participants will be made aware of and sensitised to the existence of different perspectives on data, notably (a) preparation and architecture/infrastructure, (b) data treatment/analysis, and (c) societal impact and outreach.
- The participants will learn technical skills and how to work with different types of data, e.g. multimodal, editions, historical documents, music, etc.
- Critical thinking regarding digital humanities will also be stimulated through exercises that will be presented in the welcome session and discussed in the closing session of the summer school.
- Participants will attend lectures and interactive tutorials delivered by well-known and emerging experts in the fields of digital humanities and a range of disciplines that employ digital methods. The summer school will provide an excellent opportunity to meet researchers in the field, to network with the participants and to develop best practices. Participants will be able to gain a range of theoretical and practical skills that they can apply to their own research field and specialised data.
COVID
Due to persistant Covid-related uncertainties (travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, partially closed campus, etc.), the organisers of the summer school have decided to shift to a programme that will take place online. We will nevertheless make sure to maximise the interactive and joyful atmosphere of the event.
Participants will attend lectures and interactive tutorials delivered by well-known and emerging experts in the fields of digital humanities and a range of disciplines that employ digital methods. The summer school will provide an excellent opportunity to meet researchers in the field, to network with the participants and to develop best practices. Participants will be able to gain a range of theoretical and practical skills that they can apply to their own research field and specialised data.
- preparatory reading and data preparation for the different hands-on workshops as well as preparatory reading for the lectures;
- attending and contributing to lectures and workshops during the summer school, including additional research presentation session/s;
- preparing and presenting one’s research at a dedicated session;
- writing a reflexive essay following the summer school (details to be provided during the summer school).
The school being shifted online due to the pandemic situation, the fees for the 2021 edition are reduced to:
CHF 50.-
The fees include:
- Tuition fees
- Course materials
Applications are open until May 9th, 2021.
During the online registration process, applicants are asked to provide a motivation letter (max. 2 pages), a CV, as well as a one-page abstract of your research project (if applicable).
Your motivation letter must comprise the following information:
We will ask you to proceed to the payment of the tuition fees only after a formal confirmation of your participation has been sent to you.
The applications to the scholarship are closed.
The school being shifted online due to the pandemic situation, no accomodation is planned.
We want to thank our sponsors without whom this summer school would not have been possible: Faculté des Lettres (UNIL), the dhcenter (UNIL-EPFL), the College of Humanities (EPFL) and the Programme doctoral en études numériques (financed by swissuniversities until 2021)
