Venue: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Fabianinkatu 24 A, Seminar Room 136, Ground Floor.

Dates: Monday to Tuesday 7–8 December 2015.

Registration for this event is required but free of charge. Please register online. The deadline to register is November 30.

Organizers: Mikko Tolonen, Kaius Sinnemäki and Anna Kajander

The symposium is funded by the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, and the research community Building and Use of Language Technology (BAULT) at the University of Helsinki. The premises and the website are provided by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

Follow: #HelsinkiDH

This event continues our recent efforts to promote Digital Humanities research at the University of Helsinki and more broadly in Finland. For our earlier events see Big Data Approaches to Intellectual and Linguistic History, Helsinki Digital Humanities Day, and Re-thinking the Digital Humanities – Critical, Expanded, Material.

PROGRAMME

Monday, December 7

10.00-10.15 Opening of the symposium, Mikko Tolonen & Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki)

10.15-11.15     Clifford Siskin (New York U) and Peter de Bolla (U of Cambridge): The History of Concepts as Complex Systems

11.15-12.00     Michael Gavin (U of South Carolina): Vector semantics as a theory of concepts

12.00-13.30     Lunch Break

13.30-14.15     Neil Foxlee (U of Central Lancashire): From analogue to digital: conventional and computational approaches to studying conceptual change

14.15-15.00     Timo Honkela (U of Helsinki): From computation modeling of concepts to conceptual change

15.30-16.15     Joris van Einatten (U of Utrecht): Tracing conceptual change in messy data

16.15-17.00     Silke Schwandt (U of Bielefeld): How to teach Latin to your computer: A Case of Digital Humanities and Medieval History

Tuesday, December 8

09.00-09.45     Kimmo Kettunen (National Library of Finland): Challenges in OCR quality of digitized newspapers – is there a way from data quantity to quality (re)search?

09:45-10:30     Asko Nivala (U of Turku): From the Enlightenment to Romanticism. Topic Modeling the Changes of Aesthetic Discourse in Germany

11.00-11.45     Dirk Geeraerts (U of Leuven): Quantitative corpus onomasiology

11.45-12.30     Susan Fitzmaurice (U of Sheffield): Linguistic DNA: Modelling concepts and semantic change in English 1500-1800

12.30-13.45     Lunch Break

13.45-14.30     Sinai Rusinek (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute): Meaning and un-understanding: the digital turn in conceptual history

14.30-15.15     Pasi Ihalainen (U of Jyväskylä): Tracing Transnational Conceptual Change in the Context of the Late 1910s: On Conventional and Digitized Sources and Methodology

15.45-16.30     Marius Warholm Haugen (Norwegian U of Science and Technology, Trondheim): Tracing Travel in the Periodical Press (1780-1820), Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gallica

16.30-17.15     Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen and Katariina Parhi (U of Oulu): Confusing Concepts: Psychopathy and philosophical commitments

17.15-17.45     Closing of the symposium

Abstracts are available here.

Recommended reading: We have opened a list of recommended readings on Digital Humanities and Conceptual Change. The list can be accessed and edited by anyone, so feel free to add your favorite references to the list.

Live-stream: All presentations will be streamed online. Please go to http://vn-rec.it.helsinki.fi, choose “Tutkijakollegium” and use the password tutiku to follow the presentations.

The intention of the symposium is to bring together researchers from digital and analog humanities who study conceptual change. One area of great but underused potential in such research is the use of digitized historical data, that is, data that was not born digital but has been digitized over the years. This data comes with its challenges, though, related particularly to OCR and variation in spelling. Our purpose is to convene together historians, linguists and data scientists to discuss concrete digital humanities case studies from different projects that have focused on conceptual change and that have addressed these difficulties in different ways. While the use of digital data and computational methods has been rapidly increasing in the humanities, often the focus is still on the possibilities that digitalization offers rather than on the concrete outcomes already achieved. We intend to address this issue by focusing especially on concrete case studies and outcomes rather than on future possibilities.

Central questions of the meeting are:

• What can we learn about conceptual change when using digital data and methods?
• How do we recognize conceptual change in digital data?
• How conceptual change should be studied with big digitized historical data?

The symposium provides a forum for researchers to discuss these questions and exchange knowledge on how conceptual change has been studied and should be studied in the rapidly changing research environment involving humanists, social scientists and data analysts.

In addition to the symposium we are involved in organizing a related event called Digital History in Finland on Wednesday 9 December 2015. It focuses on advancing historical practice by applying computational methods to various types of historical source materials and data in the Finnish context. The event is organized by the Digital History in Finland Network (#DigiHistFi).

The Digital History in Finland Network (#DigiHistFi) will organise a one-day symposium on Digital History in Finland at the University of Helsinki on Wednesday 9 December 2015. The motto of the network and symposium is: History first, digital second.
There will be more than 25 presentations of different projects in total, all presentations are short, 10 minutes each. This is a good opportunity to learn about many Digital History projects in Finland and meet other people working in the field. Morning sessions will also be streamed and there is a possibility to present through skype in the morning.

Places are limited, register using this form:

http://www.eventbrite.com/o/8634642340?s=48197640

For online streaming use:

Livestream: http://vn-rec.it.helsinki.fi password: tutiku

Digital History is an area within the emerging field of Digital Humanities that is combining humanities and social sciences with contemporary information and communication technologies. Digital history aims to further historical practice by applying computational methods to various types of historical source materials and data. While there is a tradition, for example, among corpus linguists to use computational methods, the study of history has been slower to take up new approaches in a productive manner.

In Finland, the computational approach to history has so far rarely impacted on the core of the historian’s craft in such a way that those who have not already any previous interests in digital humanities would pay attention. Yet, the potential for revisiting old and creating new research questions through computational methods is considerable. This is what the network and symposium seeks to explore further.

The idea of this symposium is to bring together historians working on different aspects of digital history in Finland to talk about their research and meet other scholars interested in similar questions.

Please note that the symposium has two venues:

Morning venue (9.00-12.00), Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Seminar Room, Fabianinkatu 24A, 1st floor

Afternoon venue (12.30-17.30), Siltavuorenpenger 1, tila AUD K170 (sali 2)

Programme:

Morning venue, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Seminar Room, Fabianinkatu 24A, 1st floor

9.00–9.15: Introduction (Mikko Tolonen, University of Helsinki and Hannu Salmi, University of Turku)

9.15–10.30: 1. Manuscripts, Metadata & Genres (Chair: Mats Fridlund, Aalto University)

• 1.1. Outi Hupaniittu & National Archives (Development manager Outi Hupaniittu): “READ – Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents”
• 1.2. Marko Tikka, Seija-Leena Nevala & Ilari Taskinen (University of Tampere): “Recognition and Retrieval of Handwritten Texts for Digital Humanities Research”
• 1.3. Timo Korkiakangas, Ville Walta, Maria Kallio ja Matti Lassila (University of Helsinki): “Charters, Scribes, and Formulas: Social Networks and Writing Practices in the Medieval Charters of Finland”
• 1.4. Ville Walta (SKS): “Codices Fennici – A project to study and digitize Finnish medieval and 16th century manuscripts”
• 1.5. Mikko Tolonen, Niko Ilomäki, Hege Roivainen ja Leo Lahti (University of Helsinki): “Fennica and Kungliga Catalogues and Finnish Early Modern Publishing”
• 1.6. Patrik Aaltonen (University of Helsinki): “The Problem with Moretti: Studying Literary Genres in the Digital Age”

10.30–10.45: Break

10.45–11.55: 2. GLAM (Chair: Anu Lahtinen, University of Helsinki)

• 2.1. Jaakko Tahkokallio (National Library of Finland): “National Library Sources for Digital History”
• 2.2. Johanna Ilmakunnas (University of Helsinki): “Digitized Museum Collections as Sources for Historical Research”
• 2.3. Charlotta Wolff (University of Helsinki), “For a Social History of the Enlightenment: Digital Perspectives on Diplomatic Sociability”
• 2.4. Lauri Viinikkala (University of Turku): “Mixed Reality Technology and Historical Research”
• 2.5. Susanna Ånas (Wikimedia/University of Aalto): “Bridging the Gap between Libraries, Archives, Museums, Albums and Attics”
• 2.6. Pekka Uotila (Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences): “The Family Archive as a Narrative Organization”

11.55–12.30 Paper bag lunch at Siltavuorenpenger

Afternoon venue, Siltavuorenpenger 1 tila AUD K170 (sali 2)

12.30–13.40 3. Digital World & Born Digital (Chair: Jaakko Suominen, University of Turku)

• 3.1. Martti Häikiö (University of Helsinki): “Tiedon digitalisoinnin historiaa”
• 3.2. Jaakko Suominen (University of Turku): “Doing Research on the History of Born Digital Phenomena”
• 3.3. Marjoriikka Ylisiurua (University of Helsinki): “Online Data – Historical Material Among Others, Yet Posing New Methodological Challenges to Solve”
• 3.4. Ylva Grufstedt (University of Helsinki): “Historical Culture and Consciousness in Digital Games”
• 3.5. Jessica Parland-von Essen (University of Helsinki) and Kenneth Nyberg (University of Gothenburg): “History in a Digital World – Open Production of a Web Based Textbook”

13.40–14.00 Break

14.00–15.10 4. Newspapers, Journals and Magazines (Chair: Ilkka Mäkinen, University of Tampere)

• 4.1. Tuula Pääkkönen (National Library of Finland): “244 Years of Newspaper History Digitized”
• 4.2. Risto Turunen (University of Tampere): “Combining Small and Big Data Approaches to the Language of Finnish Socialism, 1895–1918”
• 4.3. Antti Häkkinen (University of Helsinki): “Inheritance of a Good Life: How the Ideals of a Good Life Have Been Negotiated and Transmitted Between Generations”
• 4.4. Mats Fridlund (Aalto University) & Petri Paju (University of Turku): “History Mining of Engineering Journals. Exploring Transnationalism of Finnish Industrialization, 1880–1910”
• 4.5. Jukka Kortti: “The Press History Research and Digital Possibilities: The Case of Finnish Cultural Magazines in the early 20th Century”

15.10–15.20 Break

15.20–16.30 5. Maps, Audio & 3D (Chair: Jessica Parland von Essen, University of Helsinki)

• 5.1. Riitta Rainio (& Kai Lassfolk, Antti Lahelma, Tiina Äikäs), University of Helsinki: “Acoustic Measurements, 3D Modeling and Digital Image Processing at Three Sacred Sites in Northern Finland”
• 5.2. Panu Savolainen (University of Turku): “Digital Mapping of Urban Centrality and Periphery”
• 5.3. Mila Oiva (University of Turku): “Talking about Advertising. Changes in Polish Economic Discourse, 1950–1980“
• 5.4. Ilkka Jokipii & Virva Liski (University of Helsinki): “Mapping the Finnish State Criminal Court Convictions of 1918: New Insights with Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis”
• 5.5. Anssi Jääskeläinen (Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences): “Modernizing Digital History”

16.30–17.30 Concluding panel: ‘Where Are We and Where Should We Be Going?’

 

Abstracts:

1. Manuscripts, metadata & genres

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1.1. Outi Hupaniittu & National Archives (Development manager Outi Hupaniittu): READ – Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents

The National Archives of Finland is participating in the project Read (2016-2018). In cooperation with European archival institutions and researchers, the Horizon 2020 funded project aims to create a research infrastructure for the character recognition of hand written text. In the proposed paper, the project idea will be discussed from researchers’ point of view. The project aims to revolutionize access to digitized archival collections, but what does it denote? What sort of input will be needed from the researchers and what is the contribution of the National Archives in the project?

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1.2. Marko Tikka, Seija-Leena Nevala & Ilari Taskinen (University of Tampere): Recognition and retrieval of handwritten texts for digital humanities research

We present an idea of an interdisciplinary project of historians and information scientists, which is being planned at the University of Tampere. In the project, researchers work together to improve archival use and scientific research possibilities of handwritten digitized archive material. The project aims to: 1. develop a system which recognizes handwriting from digitized archive material and turns it to digital. 2. Apply these methods to practical archive environment by developing a search system, which allows word-based as well as thematic searching from a collection of digitized handwritten material. 3. Explore and test new possibilities that these systems open for humanistic research. The test material is the wartime letter collection of 40 000 letters, preserved in the Folklife archives of the University of Tampere.

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1.3. Timo Korkiakangas, Ville Walta, Maria Kallio ja Matti Lassila (University of Helsinki): Charters, Scribes, and Formulas: Social Networks and Writing Practices in the Medieval Charters of Finland

The objective of our planned project is to combine innovatively two computer-assisted tools for quantitative study of historical, linguistic, and legal historical conventions in medieval vernacular Swedish charters of the Diplomatarium Fennicum. This objective will be achieved by merging the results of diplomatic formula detection with contextual metadata by way of mainly spatio-temporal network analysis. The technical end product will be a network-based model of diachronic and areal variation within the formula inventory of the DF charters. The approach combines traditional historical methodology with computer-assisted digital diplomatics. The study encompasses charters written in and relating to Finland from the fourteenth century to 1530.

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1.4. Ville Walta: Codices Fennici – A project to study and digitize Finnish medieval and 16th century manuscripts

The Codices Fennici project aims to catalogue, study and digitize Finnish medieval and 16th century manuscripts. The project has finished a survey of the material, which has already shown that more Finnish manuscripts survive than previously estimated. Providing a digital catalogue along with digitized images of the manuscripts in a virtual library makes the material readily available and will help generate new research. The paper presents the ongoing project, introduces the material it deals with, and discusses how the manuscripts are to be presented online.

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1.5. Mikko Tolonen, Niko Ilomäki, Hege Roivainen ja Leo Lahti (University of Helsinki): Fennica and Kungliga catalogues and Finnish early modern publishing. This paper analyses the overall development of Finnish book production between 1640-1828 based on a reproducible analytical ecosystem of library catalogues. It extends our earlier pilot project on the use of the ESTC catalogue (https://github.com/rOpenGov/estc/blob/master/inst/examples/20151023-LIBER.md, also to be published as an article, forthcoming in LIBER Quarterly). In this new paper focusing on Scandinavia, we will further demonstrate the potential of digitized library catalogues as tool for digital humanities and part of reproducible research. We will continue our experimental analysis of paper consumption in early modern book production, and demonstrate in practice the importance of open-science principles for digital humanities.

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1.6. Patrik Aaltonen (University of Helsinki): The problem with Moretti: studying literary genres in the digital age

In books like Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900 (1998) and Graphs, maps, trees (2005), Franco Moretti has explored the history of literary genres from a quantitative and statistical perspective, by the way of ”distant reading”. I will adress one of the problems with Moretti’s controversial approach; namely, the underlying assumption that every text has an inherent and fixed genre. Today many genre theorists argue that genre isn’t a property of texts, but rather something that readers impute to texts. In my paper, I will explain how this changes the study of literary genres, and propose some modifications to Moretti’s approach.

GLAM

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2.1. Jaakko Tahkokallio (National Library of Finland): on National Library of Finland Sources for Digital History

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2.2. Johanna Ilmakunnas (University of Helsinki): Digitized museum collections as sources for historical research

The proposed paper aims to explore what possibilities and restrictions historians may encounter while using digitized museum collections as source material. The paper will discuss the possibilities of exploring before relatively closed museum collections of objects and potentiality for novel approaches digitized collections offer for historians. Furthermore, restrictions such as insufficient information on images, inadequate meta data or strict copyright regulations will be discussed. The paper takes a case study approach, drawing from the idea to explore one particular object, working table, and how it can be studied with the help of digitized collections offering both textual, visual and material sources.

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2.3. Charlotta Wolff (University of Helsinki): For a social history of the Enlightenment: digital perspectives on diplomatic sociability

This paper deals with digital tools for the study of early modern networks of sociability. Through computational, quantitative and spatial analyses of data retrieved from French police archives of the latter half of the eighteenth century, it is possible to obtain a sharper picture of the various cliques that made up the aristocratic, diplomatic and literary sociability in Paris and their connections to each other, to estimate their relative weight and to analyze the importance and functions of literary sociability in a political and diplomatic context. In the end, this could contribute to the social history of the Enlightenment.

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2.4. Lauri Viinikkala (University of Turku): Mixed Reality Technology and Historical Research

My presentation will deal with the subject of my doctoral thesis, i.e. the use of mixed reality technology as a tool for historical research. Mixed reality, covering both augmented and virtual reality, consists of techniques for combining digital elements with physical environment. Traditionally it has been used for illustrating the past within a museum context. The technology, however, can be useful for historical research itself since it offers both, a novel way to communicate research results to academic and non-academic audiences and a method for elaborating interpretations about the past by concretizing abstractions and through different kinds of digital reconstructions.

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2.5. Susanna Ånas (Wikimedia/University of Aalto): Bridging the gap between libraries, archives, museums, albums and attics

Locating a space for the crossover of DIY amateur history research and academic study is a problem to solve. While memory institutions are gradually opening their collections for public reuse, the consumers are left with commercial services while the preservation of private photos, letters and documents is nobody’s responsibility. Existing or new open spaces are needed where one can make available materials, access previous study, welcome non-expert contributions, share expertise, make available tools, circulate and congregate in. Are these spaces the web of existing environments, is it a working method, or are new platforms needed?

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2.6. Pekka Uotila (Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences): The Family Archive as a Narrative Organization

This paper examines the family archive as a communicative constructed organization. The aim in this conceptual article is to redescribe the personal archive and suggest new vocabularies to be used when studying and constructing the family archive. In this paper, the theoretical starting point is the narrativity of organizations. Ideas of the narrative construction of organizations in the field of organizational discourse analysis are applied to the construction of a family archive. The family archive is considered as a narrative platform that forms the emergent organization with fuzzy borders and undefined form. The individual, narrative interpretations are based on the records of the digital archive. The narrative interpretation of a family archive is illustrated with a case study of the construction of a digital archive with a married couple born 1924 (the parents of the author). The archive includes photographs, written documents and some other sentimental objects from 1926-1955. The archived records are preserved in the YKSA-personal archive –service developed and maintained by the University of Applied sciences of Mikkeli, Finland. The construction of the family archive as an organization is based on similar principles that are used to form archives in general. Some features of archiving like provenance, metadata, selection, publicity and accessibility are discussed in relation to the features of narrative interpretation of a family archive as an emergent organization. As a result the construction of a digital family archive is claimed to function as an emergent organization with similar features, like constant interplay between conversation and durable artifacts; records as meaning making machines and the emerging organization as a multiverse of contradictory and evolving interpretations and stories. The paper suggests that these features should be used to develop the theory of personal archiving and the digital archiving services.

3. Digitial world & born digital

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3.1. Martti Häikiö (University of Helsinki): Tiedon digitalisoinnin historiaa

Martti Häikiö ja Essi Ylitalo: Bit Bang. Yrjö Neuvo ja digitaalinen kumous (SKS 2013)

Martti Häikiö: Hyöty ja tiede. Tampereen teknillisen yliopiston historia 1965-2015 (SKS, ilmestyi 9.9.2015)

Martti Häikiö: Tiedon metropoli. Tutkimus, opetus ja tiedonvälitys 1045-2010. Osa 6 Helsingin kaupungin historia vuoden 1945 jälkeen (ilmestyy Helsingin Kirjamessuilla 2015)

Näissä teoksissa kuvaan ja pohdin digitalisoitumisen etenemistä ja vaikutuksia eri aloilla. Olen aiemmin kirjoittanut mm. Suomen datasiirron historian, Radiolinjan historian ja Nokia Oyj:n historian.

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3.2. Jaakko Suominen (University of Turku): Doing Research on the History of Born Digital Phenomena

The paper deals with the question how to do research on history of born digital phenomena such as video games, the internet and computing. What sort of digital methods we need for such research or do we actually need any or some? The paper introduces a forthcoming case study, related to cultural history of online discussion forums in Finland. The project will combine several research materials and methods, such as interviews, survey data and online data analysis.

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3.3. Marjoriikka Ylisiurua (University of Helsinki): Online data – historical material among others, yet posing new methodological challenges to solve

Sooner than we may think, online data like Jussi Halla-Aho’s blog texts or pre-election activity at online discussion forums, will be material for political historians. Traces of online life of ordinary citizens will soon be studied by social historians. And any economic historical research on consumer product scandals will surely utilize Twitter-fueled Martin Shkreli drug price hike controversy as a case. Currently, big data analysis solves simplistic causalities of massive scale human activity. But the complexities require a different approach. I state that the mechanisms of these complexities must be investigated with exploratory research that, while statistical, is qualitative in nature.

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3.4. Ylva Grufstedt (University of Helsinki): Historical culture and consciousness in digital games

The impact of digital games on society cannot be overestimated and historical games make up a large portion of the market. For my PhD project I intend to study historical culture and historical consciousness in digital games, taking the games’ digital form and interactive functions into special consideration. The latter have large implications on for example the presence of counterfactual scenarios and the players’ ability to “travel in time”. The study aims to unlock new insights on methodology in order to build over the gap between the reception of the games and their content, and the game themselves.

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3.5. Jessica Parland-von Essen (University of Helsinki) and Kenneth Nyberg (University of Gothenburg): History in a Digital World – Open Production of a Web Based Textbook

Historia i en digital värld is an open project on the web at digihist.se (2013). It is an introduction to several questions related to historical scholarship and teaching in a digital age, like methods, research data, source criticism, long term preservation and methods of digitization, written to support education and raise awareness. The field being large and rapidly developing, experts were invited to write thematic articles. The chapters were published one at a time and comments were gathered mainly through social media. A pdf version of the book-length text was published in 2014. Plans to produce a traditional print publication have not been realized yet. Questions like what kind of a cultural revolution we are trying to cope with and how this may affect the craft and role of historical research give the framework. In our presentation we will present the existing text and an invitation to contribute to the publication of an updated and revised edition.

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4. Digitized newspapers, journals and magazines

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4.1. Tuula Pääkkönen (National Library of Finland): 244 years of newspaper history digitized

National Library of Finland has digitized its newspaper and journal collections in systematic manner. Digitization started on 1998 and has continued consistently ever since. The digitization process and presentation system are being developed consistently to respond to the copyright owners needs and to new ways to use open data. The crowdsourcing via digital clippings has been successful effort and has revealed content where users have been interested about. This presentation tells about the past, current work and gives glimpses of future, where we hope discussion with researchers about their wishes.

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4.2. Risto Turunen (University of Tampere): Combining Small and Big Data Approaches to the Language of Finnish Socialism, 1895–1918

Finland had the biggest socialist party of Europe in the beginning of the 20^th century. I analyze this phenomenon by focusing on the socialist language. I have two different data sets: the handwritten newspapers produced by ordinary workers and the printed newspapers. I am coding the handwritten newspapers into a micro-corpus of socialism. The National Library of Finland has digitized all the printed newspapers into a massive macro-corpus. I will explore the variation inside the socialist language and the differences between socialist and non-socialist language of the time with quantitative and qualitative methods. The point of this presentation is to give an overview of my doctoral thesis that combines approaches from conceptual history, labour history and digital humanities.

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4.3. Antti Häkkinen (University of Helsinki): Inheritance of a good life: How the ideals of a good life have been negotiated and transmitted between generations

The goal of this paper is to discuss the common ideals of a good life. Especially it will reflect the ways these ideals have been expressed by common people of different generations and how these ideals have been negotiated, transmitted and reproduced in singular families. A special family life course interview database will be utilized. It consists of 66 life course interviews of three generations in the Päijät-Häme district. The study has been done by analyzing expressions of good life by content analysis and comparing the results by generation, sex and family. The idea is to enlarge the study to the Finnish Historical Newspaper database in the future.

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4.4. Mats Fridlund (Aalto University) & Petri Paju (University of Turku): History mining of engineering journals. Exploring transnationalism of Finnish industrialization, 1880-1910

This presentation describes an explorative project to use text mining tools to confirm and challenge existing knowledge about the history of technology and industrialization in general and that of Finnish history of industrialization in particular. In the planned first practical project, we will use digitized Finnish engineering journals (in Swedish) from 1880 to 1910 that have been made available online by the National library of Finland. The study will primarily explore various transnational issues of technoscientific knowledge and technology transfer of the period, especially what kind of foreign technologies that were of interests to the engineering community and how that changed over time during the period, as well as what countries and places that were seen as influential and in the focus of the engineering community at different times.

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4.5. Jukka Kortti (University of Helsinki): The Press History Research and Digital Possibilities: The Case of Finnish Cultural Magazines in the early 20^th Century

The concept of digital humanities or more precisely digital history includes wide variety of different ways to use communication and computational technologies in research in the field of humanities and social sciences. Data mining together with the ideas of open access provides new ways to use history sources in research. One way to do digital history is to make use of the possibilities of digital software as a tool in history research – to piggyback onto developed technology in a history method. In my presentation, I will show how I have made use of data analysis software Atlas.ti in my study on the Finnish cultural magazines of the early 20^th century. I will present the preliminary remarks of applying Atlas to the methods of quantitative and qualitative content analyses in the study of the press history.

5. Maps, audio & 3D

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5.1. Riitta Rainio (& Kai Lassfolk, Antti Lahelma, Tiina Äikäs), University of Helsinki: Acoustic measurements, 3D modeling and digital image processing at three sacred sites in Northern Finland

In Northern Finland, by the canyon lakes Julma-Ölkky, Somer and Taatsi, steep rock cliffs give rise to multiple echoes and other acoustic effects. On the same cliffs, prehistoric rock paintings as well as an ancient Sámi offering site can be found. The paper presents our ongoing archaeoacoustic project that seeks to explore the role of sound in the development and use of these archaeological sites. According to historical sources, echoes played an essential role in the shamanistic rituals that took place by the offering site of Taatsi. The research methods include multichannel recording, spectrum analysis, digital image processing and 3D scanning of the environment.

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5.2. Panu Savolainen (University of Turku): Digital mapping of urban centrality and periphery

keywords: historyGIS, centrality, periphery, 18th century, 19th century, Turku

The centre-periphery oppositions have a long history in the field of human geography. In my paper, I present novel ideas how historical data may be applied to understand centrality and periphery in historical urban contexts. I present some preliminary cases from 18-19th century Turku, where different aspects of central and peripheral areas and historical aspects of the distinction are analysed with GIS. Furthermore, I evaluate the issue also from the angle of text corpuses, where the historical meanings of the phenomena and their spatial relevance are discussed.

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5.3. Mila Oiva (University of Turku), Talking about Advertising. Changes in Polish Economic Discourse, 1950-1980

This paper is a study of the changing understanding of the concepts related to advertising in state socialist Poland, in 1950-1980. This is an ongoing project, which uses computer assisted text analysis tools for studying conceptual history. The common understanding is that advertising in the state socialist countries – if there was any – was a kind of ‘socialist’ in character. Advertising was discussed in the Conference of Advertising Specialists organized in Prague in 1957, where the principles of socialist advertising were determined. In Poland, the theoretical discussion of the economists on the best ways to reform planned economies began in the mid-1950s. Practical handbooks on advertising were published since 1956. Starting from 1956 advertising and marketing were taught at the educational facilities in Poland. Similar developments took place also elsewhere in East Central Europe. The main sources of this paper are annual reports of the Polish Chamber of Foreign Trade in 1950-1981 (with some missing years), issues of economic magazine Życie Gospodarcze (The Economic Life) in 1950-1980, and entries of Polish encyclopedias in 1959-1967 on propaganda, advertising, sales promotion and marketing. The research question of the paper is how the concepts were understood in different public spheres in Poland, and how did the perception change over time. To what extent themes related to disseminating commercial information were discussed, and what meanings they were given, when discussed? What do the changes tell about the ability of inability of the Polish planned economic thinking to reform, and the internal hierarchies within it? The underlying philosophy of this paper is that in order to grasp an understanding of how certain concepts were understood, negotiated and how their understanding changed in a state socialist society, it is important to look at the perception in different media categories. In the socialist countries, like also elsewhere, things were discussed in different ways in different arena. The main newspaper tackled issues in a different way than a leisure magazine, or a professional magazine with restricted circulation, although they all were state funded and checked by the censorship office. Similarly, the texts were read in different ways and for different purposes, and partly by different people. In this paper I will categorize the analyzed texts into semi-public, professional public, and openly public categories.

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5.4. Ilkka Jokipii & Virva Liski (University of Helsinki): Mapping the Finnish State Criminal Court Convictions of 1918: New Insights with Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

Our aim is to approach Finnish State Criminal Court (FSCC) data with computational methods. Presentation will demonstrate the possibilities of these methods through two examples. We will discuss about possible new interpretations and questions raised by exploratory data visualizations. Data has been collected as a part of larger research project started in 2014. Project is supervised by Dr. Torsten Santavirta and has been funded by Finnish Academy and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). Project is still running and the complete data set will consist of approximately 9000 records of FSCC convicts.

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5.5. Anssi Jääskeläinen (Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences): Modernizing digital history

History and digital must go hand in hand, especially if the intention is to influence younger generation users. These users require new interaction methods like immersive 3D, augmented reality or Google like interface. A recently established R&D center Digitalia aims to preserve and provide into use historical materials, E-mails and AV for example. In order to view and even more importantly to understand these valuable materials e.g. after 20 years, digital technology is needed. The amount of digital material also grows exponentially. This leads to a situation where e.g. appraisal cannot be done by hand anymore. Automation is required.

kohteeseen

 

NEW ADDED DH COURSES FOR SPRING 2016!

Asian Studies: Digital Media in India: Religion, Culture, Society seminar course (WAS211; WAS212; WSA321; WAS 324, WED 12-14, 20.1.2016-4.5.2016)

Church History: Kirjahistorian perusteet (KH260A)

Church History: Kirjahistorian lähteet ja metodit (KH260B)

 

In 2015-16 we will pilot a Digital Humanities 25-credit minor subject study block at the Faculty of Arts for those University of Helsinki students who have completed their bachelor’s degree.

For an earlier post about the Digital Humanities minor subject study block see:

https://blogs.helsinki.fi/mstolone/2015/08/17/digital-humanities-minor-subject-study-block-25-credits-university-of-helsinki-faculty-of-arts-2015-16/

You can find DIGIHUM also in Weboodi. Registration to some of the courses (including mandatory “Introduction to digital humanities”, 28.10-11.12.2015) has already begun:

Digitaalinen humanismi, 2015-16 

The optional courses listed in Weboodi can be supplemented, below is an updated listing of possible courses.  Of new courses added to the list, note especially ”Avoin digitaalinen kulttuuriperintö” and “Digihumanismi ja tekstiaineistot” that have been particularly designed with the Digital Humanities Teaching module in mind. Also other new courses are listed! If you note that something is missing and should be listed (regarding Spring 2016 especially), please point this out.

 

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 DH1 Theory and practice (5-15 sp)

DH1a Introduction to digital humanities (5 sp, Johdatus DH) 

DH1b Optional courses to choose from (0-10 sp)

English philology: Korpuslingvistiikka (Eng310c)

Translation studies: Digitaaliset aineistot (CKT279)

Finnish language: Kielenoppiminen, vuorovaikutus ja teknologia (Ssu353/Ssu312T/Ssu208T)

Finnish language: Monitieteinen termityö (Ssu351/Ssu311/Ssu901)

Finnish language: Käsiteanalyysi ja termityö (Ssu311/Ssu356)

History: Digitala källör och medier (HHR233)

History: Games and history (HHR222)

History: Historiantutkimus, tilastot ja määrällinen tutkimus (Hhh247/HSS314/322)

Church History: Kirjahistorian perusteet (KH260A)

Church History: Kirjahistorian lähteet ja metodit (KH260B)

Ethnology: Avoin digitaalinen kulttuuriperintö (KSU350)

Musicology: Johdatus tietokoneavusteiseen musiikintutkimukseen (TMU112E)

Film and television studies: Yhteiskunta ja av-kulttuuri (TET1050e)

Film and television studies: Av mediakasvatus (TET1062e)

Asian Studies: Digital Media in India: Religion, Culture, Society seminar course (WAS211; WAS212; WSA321; WAS 324, WED 12-14, 20.1.2016-4.5.2016)

• OTHER SUITABLE ONES CAN BE SUGGESTED

 

DH2 Methods

 Courses to choose from (5-15 sp)

FIN-CLARIN: Digihumanismi ja tekstiaineistot (2^nd period)

University of Aalto: Ohjelmointia Scalalla (MOOC)

Computer science: Ohjelmoinnin MOOC (Java)

Social Sciences: Introduction to programming for social scientists

Art history: Paikkatiedon (GIS) sovellukset kulttuurintutkimukseen (TTA250)

Computer science: Tilastollinen päättely R-ohjelmistolla

Language technology: Tulosten esittäminen ja niiden arviointi tilastomenetelmillä (CLT255)

Finnish language: Johdatus korpuslingvistiikkaan ja kielitieteen laskennallisiin menetelmiin (Ssu221-226, Ssu351-NORSU1)

Language technology: Korpuslingvistiikan johdantokurssi (CLT150)

Musicology: Musiikkiohjelmoinnin perusteet (TMU211CE)

Translation studies: Kääntämisen tietotekniikka (CKT114)

Language technology: Ohjelmointi ja luonnollisen kielen käsittely 1 (CLT237)

Language technology: Kielen morfologisen käsittelyn työkalut 1 (CLT261)

Language technology: Johdatusta luonnollisen kielen käsittelyyn (CLT120)

Translation studies: Konekäännös (CKT276)

Archeology: Paikkatietoklinikka (KAR214)

Social Sciences: Complex systems

Social Sciences: Data extraction

In addition, many of the courses offered at Aalto and in Computer science (HY) fit the Methods part of the module. The inclusion of other courses should be negotiated separately. Examples of such courses are:

Aalto: Machine Learning: Basic Principles

Aalto: Statistical Natural Language Processing

Aalto: Information Visualization

Computer science: Introduction to Machine Learning

Computer science: Data Mining (guided self study)

Computer science: Big Data Frameworks

 

DH3 Multidisciplinary project (5 sp)
→ Mandatory (for the spring 2016 course, contact Mikko Tolonen, mikko.tolonen@helsinki.fi)

 

 

 

Digital Humanities Research Seminar 2015-16, Fall Programme

30.10 Antti Kanner, (HY, Finnish language), “A vagrant’s path: tracking the life cycle of a legal term in 19th century newspaper data”. Commentator: Timo Honkela (HY)

13.11 Ylva Grufstedt (HY, History), “The Practice of History in videogames – Historical culture and consciousness in digital and interactive media”. Commentator: Jaakko Stenros (Tampere)

27.11 Eric Malmi (Aalto, Computer Science), “Automatically Reconstructing and Analyzing Family Trees”. Commentator: Tiina Miettinen (UTA, History). [Discussion in Finnish because of genealogical terminology.]

11.12 Erik Henriksson (HY, Greek), “The Language and Meter of Late Greek Poetry: A Computational Approach”. Commentator: Timo Korkiakangas (HY)

18.12. Anna Kajander, (HY, Ethnology), “Digital book culture and the new reading habits”. Commentator: Harri Heikkilä (Aalto) NB! Change of venue. Please note that the seminar will convene at the MORPHOLOGICAL ARCHIVE (Muoto-opin arkisto) 4^th floor of the Main Building of the University of Helsinki (Fabianinkatu 33). The Morphological archive is at the north end of the 4^th floor corridor, at the “new side” of the main building. So, we will NOT be at Metsätalo on this Friday.

 Normally the DH seminar will convene on Fridays, 16.15-18.00 at Lecture Room 9 at Metsätalo (U40).

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About Digital Humanities Research Seminar

Open to all who feel that they want to be part of DH Research community at the University of Helsinki (the fact that this is organised at the Faculty of Arts does not by any means imply that it is only for people at the Faculty of Arts!).

Meant as a hub or a forum where one can meet other people interested in this subject matter.

How to get involved? First thing is to write an email to mikko.tolonen@helsinki.fi to be included in the mailing list of the seminar. Or, just show up at the seminar.

The Fall 2015 programme has been fixed, but the Spring 2016 programme will be formed based on the interest of the seminar group.

It is possible and desirable that also activities other than “classic seminar papers” will take place in the future.

Updates to the Fall programme will be amended to this blog post.

 

“…to be a Mandevillean is to make a contribution to the Mandeville community…”

Bernard Mandeville Scholarship is an important and growing field in early modern history and philosophy. The idea of our initiative is to promote studies on Mandeville and other Mandevillean undertakings by upholding best scholarly practices and developing new ways of communication that can speed up the scholarly process.

During 2013-15 there have been at least six gatherings of Mandevillean scholars on different continents and different countries with truly international and amicable spirit. The idea is that people interested in Mandeville’s thinking will keep meeting in person on annual basis even when the 300th Anniversary of the Fable of the Bees is behind us. So far the communication of Mandevillean activities has been based on an informal network. We want to open up this collaboration so that the community is inclusive and also new people can join in.

In Mandeville in Latvia conference on 10.10.2015 we signed a Riga Protocol for Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community. The Riga Protocol states the following:

• In order to become part of Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community you need to upload at least one of your scholarly items with some link to Mandeville on Zenodo Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community repository (http://zenodo.org/collection/user-mandeville)
• Once you have become “Mandevillean” by uploading your scholarly contribution(s) to Mandeville Community on Zenodo you will be sent an email asking if you want to be on Mandeville mailing list. You will also be granted editing access to the working documents of Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community. For example, the planning of annual future meetings will be done together with Mandevilleans (i.e. those who have made any kind of contribution to the community on Zenodo).

For more details about uploading your work to Mandeville community, see https://blogs.helsinki.fi/mstolone/2015/10/08/open-bernard-mandeville-scholarship-on-zenodo/

The idea regarding the future development of the activities of Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community is to take full advantage of the best practices of open science. These include ideas about open collaborative authorship, development of new ways of scholarly publishing, open peer reviewing and other ways of advancing the scientific process and practices. We will also think about how to renew the structure of our annual meetings.

The Riga Protocol for Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community was originally signed by Andrea Branchi (The American University of Rome), Elena Muceni (University of Geneva), Matteo Revolti (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt), Atis Zakatistovs (Riga Business School), Mauro Simonazzi (Università degli Studi di Camerino), Heikki Haara (University of Helsinki), Joaquim Braga (University of Coimbra), Inese Suija Markova (Institute for Environmental Solutions), Janis Frisvalds, and Mikko Tolonen (University of Helsinki).

Since the Mandeville in Latvia conference was meant as a smaller meeting and we have had over 50 scholars participating in Mandeville meetings over the two last years (and most likely many more who have not yet been able to join us), we ask for people now to ratify the Riga Protocol for Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community. The ratification is done simply by filling your name and affiliation to the following questionnaire:

http://goo.gl/forms/ABmVbAaHxc

The ratification means that you agree with the idea of Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community (to be a Mandevillean is to make a contribution to the Mandeville community) and that you intend to make such a contribution. Of course, you will only become a Mandevillean when you have contributed to the community by uploading it on Zenodo (NB! It can be any form of scholarly contribution, even a blog post like this will do). We understand that especially students do not yet necessarily have published articles and thus cannot archive pre-prints of them. Thus, we underline that any form of research contribution will do, in our thinking research data is also crucial and not just the end-products in the form of journal publications. Also those people who have not yet worked on Mandeville are free to sign the ratification, if you feel that there is a possibility that you might work on Mandeville in the future. Also, if you want to support our open science principles, but you do not work on anything related to Mandeville, feel free to sign the ratification “in spirit” (note this next to your name).

The deadline for the ratification of the Riga Protocol is 15. November 2015. After that we will upload this document including the names of the people who have ratified the Riga Protocol for Open Bernard Mandeville Scholarship Community on Zenodo.

Please circulate this message as widely as possible among the Mandeville community, as well as on other discussion forums. After all, we are all potential Mandevilleans, if you think about it.

 

We, the people studying history of philosophy, have not always been the best to take full advantage of the many brilliant ways out there to improve our scholarship and its visibility.

For example, even when many of us hang around Academia.edu (sometimes, perhaps, just to to see if one or two people have googled us this week), yet we are often quite poor at sharing our work, even when there is no reason not to share it. Parallel publishing (different from publishing in an open access journal) should be a norm and not an exception.

Parallel archiving/publishing means that a person first publishes her article in a regular journal. After that, she archives the article as such (if the publisher allows it) or an earlier version of it in an open digital repository. The published article, or a version of it, becomes publicly available through the parallel publication while the scholarly references are still made to the publication in the scientific journal. The idea of parallel publication is that in an open repository it is accessible to everyone for free. Archiving your pre-print drafts also helps the publisher in different ways. This is something that the publishers these days understand, even if scholars have not yet caught up with the trend.

Here is a recent example of a parallel publication in the mentioned Academia.edu by Robin Douglass:

https://www.academia.edu/12238390/Thomas_Hobbess_changing_account_of_liberty_and_challenge_to_republicanism

Note how Robin points out in this parallel publication that “This is a post-print version of the article and is not for citation. The published version is available at…”

This is a good point to be made regarding parallel publications for the sake of clarification. Also, one needs to check publisher policies regarding parallel publishing, these can be easily checked, for example, here:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

Some people in the history of philosophy have of course always been tech-savvy and versed in the principles of open access and open science. Yet, I believe it is the time that all of us start making our research as publicly available as possible. This will not only benefit us as individual scholars, but also the field of scholarship that we represent.

Mandeville Scholarship

A very good example of a line of scholarship that should be taking full advantage of open access and open science is research on Bernard Mandeville that is close to my heart. Mandeville scholarship is a small, but growing field (compared for example to the David Hume Business). What I have been thinking for some time now is that Mandevilleans would benefit immensely of finding new relevant research on Mandeville from one open repository.

Luckily that open repository is at hand and it is called Zenodo.  The great benefits of Zenodo is its easy-to-use interface, the possibility of saving multiple different kinds of works (not only articles), its direct link to Github (that might concern history of philosophy less at this point in time) and the chance of creating communities.

While writing this I created a community on Zenodo called “Bernard Mandeville Scholarship”.

http://zenodo.org/collection/user-mandeville

What you need to do now is to go to Zenodo, sign-up and start uploading parallel publications of your work, also unpublished drafts are good, as well as lectures etc. Every upload will also be marked with a DOI. If you use the following link, it will ensure that the uploaded record is added to Bernard Mandeville Scholarship community collection:

http://zenodo.org/deposit/?c=mandeville

Now, every time in the future you upload work related to Mandeville (old or new) in any possible form to Zenodo, just by noting that it is part of “Bernard Mandeville Scholarship” (or using the indicated link above), it can then be found by everyone together with other work on Mandeville by other people (given that they use the same community identifier when uploading it). Once the community starts growing (currently it is empty), we will also benefit of other websites harvesting Zenodo etc.

Thus, to repeat a little: if you are a Mandeville scholar or if you have done any work on Bernard Mandeville, sign up to Zenodo if you haven’t already. Upload your work on Zenodo and tag it as Bernard Mandeville Scholarship in the relevant field. Then tell a friend and ask them to start doing the same thing. This is what I will start doing as well – although I have most of my Mandeville publications archived as parallel publications elsewhere, the only thing that I have uploaded to Zenodo so far is one fleeting lecture. But this is to say that it is not too late for you either. And to underline the good part of Zenodo: it is not only for archiving publications, also other forms of relevant scholarship, even slides from your Mandeville presentations, are just as important.

If people deposit also their earlier work (all those gems from the 1970s onwards), soon we will have created with minimal effort a very useful repository for Mandeville scholarship. It couldn’t be any easier. At the same time, we move quickly beyond just listing and linking things related to Mandeville (although one very good form of documentation to have on Bernard Mandeville Scholarship on Zenodo is different lists as well, Irwin Primer has been very prolific in this lately). Hopefully, sooner than later we will have a significant body of work to be found from one repository shared openly and freely with everyone with internet access anywhere in the world. To me it seems that necessary steps for having more impact as a group and a community of Mandevilleans could not have been made any easier.

PS This blog post was written as part of my paper for Mandeville in Riga symposium, 8.-10.10.2015. In my paper I will suggest a collaborative authorship project for writing about contemporary relevance of Mandeville. More updates on that to follow later, if it takes off.

Slides and other information of DH kickoff event, 1.10. 

Conceptual change: Digital Humanities Case Studies

A symposium on digital humanities and conceptual change at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 7.-8.12.2015.

Confirmed speakers:

Peter de Bolla (Cambridge),  Joris van Eijnatten (Utrecht), Susan Fitzmaurice, (Sheffield), Neil Foxlee (Former Senior Research Fellow,
University of Central Lancashire), Michael Gavin (University of South Carolina), Dirk Geeraerts (Leuven), Timo Honkela (Helsinki), Pasi Ihalainen (Jyväskylä), Kimmo Kettunen (National Library of Finland / Digitalia), Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen (Oulu), Asko Nivala (Turku), Katariina Parhi (Oulu), Sinai Rusinek (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute), Silke Schwandt (Bielefeld) and Clifford Siskin (NYU), Marius Warholm Haugen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim)

Livestream: http://vn-rec.it.helsinki.fi password: tutiku

The intention of this event is to bring together researchers from digital and analog humanities who study conceptual change. One area of great but underused potential in such research is the use of digitized historical data, that is, data that was not born digital but has been digitized over the years. This data comes with its challenges, though, related particularly to OCR and variation in spelling. Our purpose is to convene together historians, linguists and data scientists to discuss concrete digital humanities case studies from different projects that have focused on conceptual change and that have addressed these difficulties in different ways. While the use of digital data and computational methods has been rapidly increasing in the humanities, often the focus is still on the possibilities that digitalization offers rather than on the concrete outcomes already achieved. We intend to address this issue by focusing especially on concrete case studies and outcomes rather than on future possibilities.

Central questions in this meeting are:
– What can we learn about conceptual change when using digital data and methods?
– How do we recognize conceptual change in digital data?
– How conceptual change should be studied with big digitized historical data?

The meeting provides a forum for researchers to discuss these questions and exchange knowledge on how conceptual change has been studied and should be studied in the rapidly changing research environment involving humanists, social scientists and data analysts.

The dates for the symposium are Monday to Tuesday 7–8 December 2015 and the venue is the premises of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.

All welcome! More information to follow shortly, including the programme.

PS Places are limited, register ASAP to secure your place or follow the live stream:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conceptual-change-digital-humanities-case-studies-tickets-19571569090

Call for Papers: Digital History in Finland, Wednesday, 9.12.2015

 

The Digital History in Finland Network  (#DigiHistFi) will organise a one-day symposium on Digital History in Finland at the University of Helsinki on Wednesday 9th of December 2015. The motto of the network and symposium is: History first, digital second.

 

Digital History is an area within the emerging field of Digital Humanities that is combining humanities and social sciences with contemporary information and communication technologies. Digital history aims to further historical practice by applying computational methods to various types of historical source materials and data. While there is a tradition, for example, among corpus linguists to use computational methods, the study of history has been slower to take up new approaches in a productive manner. In Finland, the computational approach to history has so far rarely impacted on the core of the historian’s craft in such a way that those who have not already any previous interests in digital humanities would pay attention. Yet, the potential for revisiting old and creating new research questions through computational methods is considerable. This is what the network and symposium seeks to explore further.

 

The idea of this symposium is to bring together historians working on different aspects of digital history in Finland to talk about their research and meet other scholars interested in similar questions.

 

We invite submissions of short papers of 15-20 minutes (abstracts of 100 words) on any aspect of digital history. We especially encourage submissions of project ideas and sketches of emerging work. In the morning session it is also possible to present papers through skype. So, it is strongly encouraged that historians from all Finnish organisations participate.

The deadline for submitting a paper is Friday 30.10.2015. Please send the title of the presentation and 100 word abstract to: digihistfi@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance and symposium practicalities of the symposium will be communicated by 13.11.2015.

 

For information, contact: digihistfi@gmail.com

 

Programme committee:

 

Mikko Tolonen (University of Helsinki), mikko.tolonen@helsinki.fi Chair

Mats Fridlund (Aalto University), mats.fridlund@aalto.fi

Anu Lahtinen (University of Helsinki), anulah@iki.fi

Ilkka Mäkinen (University of Tampere), ilkka.makinen@staff.uta.fi

Jessica Parland-von Essen (University of Helsinki), parland@csc.fi

Hannu Salmi (University of Turku), hansalmi@utu.fi

Jaakko Suominen (University of Turku), jaasuo@utu.fi

Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki), kaius.sinnemaki@helsinki.fi

1.10.2015 – Kaisa Library Auditorium

What is Digital Humanities? How is digital humanities taught in 2015-16 at the Faculty of Arts? Who is doing Digital Humanities? Join us to meet other students, teachers and researchers at HDH Kickoff Event.

Digital Humanities is an emerging field combining humanities and social sciences with contemporary information and communication technologies. It applies computational methods to various types of source materials and data.  Digital humanities also includes the study of the impact of digitalization on culture and society at large.

For the academic year 2015-16 at the University of Helsinki we are introducing two core instruments for students and researchers from various different backgrounds to advance their efforts in the Digital Humanities and at the same time to build the DIGIHUM community in Helsinki:

1)    Digital Humanities minor subject study block

2)    Digital Humanities seminar

The idea of the kickoff event is to discuss practical matters relating to the teaching module and the DH Seminar. And, of course, to socialize with people interested in digital humanities.

HDH Kickoff Event Programme:

• 13.00 Context for the digital humanities at the University of Helsinki
• 13.30 Digital Humanities thematic teaching module (minor subject study block)
• 14.00 Digital Humanities course presentations (2-slide presentations by teachers)
• 15.00 Digital Humanities seminar practicalities
• 16.00 Digital Humanities socializing

Modular study block of digital humanities will give you the rudiments of theory and practice including the basics of relevant methods. Digital Humanities minor subject study block is targeted particularly for MA level students. You can read more about the teaching module here: http://bit.ly/1TRdnAS

Digital Humanities seminar will be launched 1st of October. We ask that all the people who are interested to participate in the DH seminar would come to the meeting (or send an email to mikko.tolonen@helsinki.fi to express their interest). The seminar is meant for both PhD-students and other researchers alike. It is aimed at people from all academic backgrounds, also outside the University of Helsinki. DH Seminar will convene on Fridays from 16.15 to 17.45 at [seminar room that will be announced later]. The Fall meetings are scheduled to take place on 23.10., 13.11., 27.11., 11.12. and 18.12. Everyone interested is welcome.

Socializing on 1st of October from 16.00 onwards includes refreshments provided by The National Library of Finland Centre for Preservation and Digitisation and it’s new project: http://www.kansalliskirjasto.fi/yleistieto/uutiset/1434456549929.html

Please register to the event using this form. 

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Tervetuloa Helsinki Digital Humanities 2015-16 lukuvuoden käynnistystilaisuuteen 1.10.2015 Kaisa Kirjaston Auditorioon klo 13 alkaen.

Tilaisuus on tarkoitettu digitaalisen humanismin opintokokonaisuudesta kiinnostuneille, digitaalisten ihmistieteiden tutkimusta tekeville tai siitä kiinnostuneille – sekä sitä varten, että tapaisit muita joilla samansuuntaisia intressejä.

Ohjelma keskittyy avaamaan erityisesti kahden uuden opetusinstrumentin käytännön asioita:

1. Digitaalisen humanismin maisteritasoinen sivuainekokonaisuus Humanistisessa tiedekunnassa
2. Digitaalisen humanismin seminaari, joka on avoin kaikille väitöskirjantekijöille ja muille tutkijoilla joilla DIGIHUM intressi tutkimuksessa.

Sekä digihum-sivuainekokonaisuus ja digihum-tutkijaseminaari ovat uusia kokonaisuuksia jotka aloittavat toimintansa lukuvuotena 2015-16.