DiMPO Workshop on Digital Practices in Arts and Humanities

By Klaudia Grabowska and Maciej Maryl

In May 2017 members of DARIAH working group Digital Methods and Practices Observatory (DiMPO) gathered in Warsaw to sum up the ongoing activities and discuss the scope of further endeavours.  The meeting and workshop were organised by Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences and chaired by Costis Dallas and Maciej Maryl.  It was aimed at discussing the results of the survey on Digital Practices in the Arts and Humanities in the light of the feedback gathered in Rome during AIUCD Conference in January this year and the previous DiMPO meeting in Berlin (24 April 2017).  While the research team is working on the final report, the highlights from the study on how digital researchers conduct their work have already been published online.

During the Warsaw workshop DiMPO group focused on the evaluation of the 2015 survey and preparations for its next iteration.  It was decided that the new survey would benefit greatly from the critical feedback, hence the members of the group agreed to postpone it until the end of 2018 (the study could be completed by the end of 2020).  It was also agreed upon that the next round of the survey should be preceded by qualitative analysis through case studies.  Hence, during the workshop the group discussed various aspects of the planned study, including case-selection, methodological framework, templates for case studies, and the needed size of the research team.

It was decided that the qualitative phase will consist of case studies concentrated on projects in the humanities, which apply digital methods.  The research will focus on the  background of digital humanists, capturing the moment of transition from non-digital to digital methods and observing how both traditional and novel scientific practices intertwine within a single research workflow.  The aim is to observe how research teams working on digital humanities projects communicate, interact and select their tools.  Moreover, it is important to trace how digital media support the knowledge construction and how digital tools influence scholars’ relationship with the object and their perception of it.  This leads to an approach focused on projects rather than individual researchers.

During the public part of the event, organised as a pre-conference workshop of Cultural Literacy in Europe: Second Biennial Conference, DiMPO Members shared the results of their research into digital methods and practices in the humanities. Claire Clivaz (Switzerland), Maciej Maryl (Poland), Geraldine Schneider (Austria), Ingrida Vosyliute (Lithuania) presented national results of the 2015 DiMPO Survey, while other colleagues discussed different national projects dedicated to digital scholarly practices: Maija Paavolainen (Finland), Andrey Volodin (Russia) Ulrike Wuttke (Germany).

Full report from the workshop will be available soon.

---

---