DH Day 2026
At the heart of humanities scholarship has traditionally stood the human being: researchers contextualize human forms of expression - literature, music, historical sources, critically examine their epistemic value, and pursue an understanding of the scructinized phenomena through interpretation. This hermeneutic process rests on disciplinary standards, experience, and reflective judgment.
But what happens when research steps are digitally mediated or even (partially) automated? The Digital Humanities have, among other things, established quantitative methods in which the starting point is often not a manual review of research materials, but the statistical analysis of modeled data - with human interpretation entering only afterward. Yet when scholars allow systems to (co-)determine the data basis of their research, does this pose a threat to their autonomy? Is the research subject gradually fading into the background, or do we need to rethink and redefine the roles and contours of scholarly agency? While the models and algorithms in use are themselves human-made, not every computational step can always be manually traced in detail.
These questions become especially pressing when it comes to AI: the so-called human-in-the-loop (deliberate human intervention through well-crafted prompts for AI systems) can significantly shape the quality of generated outputs. Even so, the space within which results are generated remains constrained by the largely opaque training data of large language models. There is also the question of how dependent we want to become on systems developed by private companies, over whose development we have little to no influence.
These and related issues bear directly on human autonomy in the research process. Questions about the challenges, opportunities, and potential shifts in scholarly roles within the humanities will therefore take center stage at the DH Day 2026 at the University of Münster – an event open to all digital humanists: researchers and students alike.
Date: July 10, 2026
Venue: Lecture Hall JO 1
The DH Day 2026 is documented on zenodo.org. (in German)