DH Day 2023

8 December 2023 - Cooperation and Participation in the Digital Humanities

The DH Day 2023 is documented on zenodo.org.

Research in the digital humanities is a collaborative endeavour. Digitally oriented research projects usually have a wide range of tasks, each of which requires very different competences. The distribution of tasks among different minds and the associated close cooperation across disciplinary boundaries pose new challenges for research in the humanities. Cooperation with partners outside of one's own discipline requires special care, the communicative effort is often higher: one must understand the other person with his or her competences, cognitive interests and objectives and also be able to express one's own motivations in such a way that joint work becomes possible. The basic principle is to find a common language.

In the digital humanities, two disciplinary boundaries are regularly crossed: Firstly, the collaboration of experts trained in the humanities with research software engineers presupposes a negotiation of the boundaries between natural science and humanities methods and procedures. The methodologically oriented discourse also regularly crosses the boundaries between the individual disciplines of the humanities:
Historical and linguistic projects talking together about manuscript recognition or data modelling, theological and archaeological projects aiming at mapping and thus visualising historical events, social science tagging procedures and literary science annotations, etc. Between all these and other disciplinary works and cognitive interests there are overlaps and common activities that can be fertilised through dialogue.

Finally, a completely different kind of cooperative boundary crossing takes place within the framework of citizen science: Participatory cooperation with people outside the academic core opens up science in the direction of society (which usually finances this science). Between the pure delivery of data by laypersons and the cooperative collaboration on an equal footing, characterised by recognition, there is a wide participatory field that needs to be smoothed in communicative terms.

The 5th DH Day at the University of Münster would like to address this topic area and ask about cooperative and participatory structures in digital humanities projects carried out on site (and beyond). We will meet on Friday, 8.12.2023 for lectures, discussions, the traditional poster slam and overall a hopefully cooperative and participatory exchange.

Programme

9:30 - 10:00	Welcome Dr. Jan Horstmann, DH Coordinator at the University of Münster and Head of the SCDH Greetings Prof. Dr. Jan Keupp, Speaker of the Center for Digital Humanities Münster Prof. Dr. Michael Quante, Vice-Rector for Internationalization, Knowledge Transfer and Sustainability of Münster University Jörg Lorenz, deputy director of the University and State Library of Münster
10:00 - 11:00	"Die Tatsache, dass ich mich in Dich verliebt habe, ist nun wohl kein Geheimnis mehr (…)". LB_00017_0001" The Citizen Science project 'Gruß und Kuss - Citizens receive and preserve love letters' Keynote Lecture by Prof. Dr. Andrea Rapp, TU Darmstadt Love letters written by persons of public interest are often well documented and indexed, even in popular and successful anthologies. However, love letters are also a particularly widespread 'everyday phenomenon', affecting people of all genders, ages, stages of life, classes, and milieus. Thus, although they represent a unique source for linguistic, historical, and sociological research, they are predominantly preserved only in private 'family archives' and are therefore generally at risk of loss and largely unknown to research. The Koblenz-Darmstadt Love Letter Archive collects, indexes and researches letter donations together with citizens and thus pursues a concept of shared heritage and shared ownership. The digitization process of the love letter collections with its complex legal and ethical implications is an excellent opportunity to discuss the role of FAIR & CARE principles for this kind of research data and to explore different possibilities of social participation and social impact. Andrea Rapp studied German language and literature, art history and ethnology and received her doctorate from the University of Trier with a thesis on Diebold Lauber's atelier in Hagenau. After working as a research assistant in the Trier SFB 235 "Between the Meuse and the Rhine", as managing director of the "Trier Center for Digital Humanities" and as head of the Digitization Center at the Göttingen State and University Library in Lower Saxony, she has been Professor of German Studies - Computational Philology and Medieval Studies at the TU Darmstadt since 2010. In her research on language, literature and culture, digital transformation is part of the subject matter, so that traditional philological and digital procedures are integratively combined. This includes the development of digital analysis technologies, the creation of digital editions and dictionaries, but also the sustainable development of research infrastructures and the reflection of digitality in philological research, in teaching and in the field of cultural heritage. She is currently the coordinator of the BMBF-funded Citizen Science project 'Gruß und Kuss'. Citizens receive and preserve love letters'. The lecture took place hybrid, i.e. via Zoom. It is documented at zenodo.org Video: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10405680 Presentation: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10405934
11:00 - 11:10	Coffee and tea break
11:10-11:30	Introducing the Citizen Science Working Group with Dr. Philipp Erdmann, Münster city archive and Jessica Oertel, AFO and Q.Uni Münster
11:30-11:50	Presentations of the working groups of the DH circle at the University of Münster
12:00-14:15	Lunch break (13-14: membership meeting of the Center for Digital Humanities Münster)
14:15-15:00	Poster slam Simon Dreher: Exile Letters Ulrike Gut & Philipp Meer: The PhoNE Projekt Felicity Jensz & Michael Wandusim: Global Bible Project: The first year Carolin Hemsing: Digitising Christian art treasures - detective work in the diocese of Münster Sascha Hinkel: Asking the Pope for Help Jens Rohde: Life in the Zagros Mountains in the 1st millennium BC - a digital approach Anna-Lena Schumacher: HiSMaComp - Ontology meets GIS in comparative urban history Holger Strutwolf: The Editio Critica Major of the New Testament - a digital edition
15:00-15:45	Poster session
15:45-16:00	Coffee and tea break
16:00-16:45	Collaboration as a necessity: Institutional support for research in the digital humanities Short lecture and discussion with Dr Claes Neuefeind (Managing Director Cologne Center for eHumanities) and Dr Jan Horstmann (Head of Service Center for Digital Humanities Münster) Research in the field of digital humanities often offers opportunities for collaboration - but just as often it also requires collaboration. The transformation from (often strongly anchored disciplinary) lone wolves to team play is more or less difficult. The demands placed on DH projects in terms of technical skills and expertise are so high that collaboration and recourse to appropriate research infrastructures become a necessity. The short lecture compares DH structures in Cologne and Münster and examines the opportunities and challenges of successful interaction between research, infrastructure and support structures in the field of digital humanities.
16:45-17:00	Farewell