Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2022, Keble College, University of Oxford, July 11–15, 2022

The Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School (DHOxSS) offers insights, inspiration and training to anyone with an interest in the Digital Humanities, including academics at all career stages, students, project managers, and people who work in IT, libraries, archives, cultural heritage, and related industries.

In 2022 we will be holding the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School in person at Keble College from 11-15 July, giving you the opportunity to engage with Digital Humanities experts on a range of stimulating topics. 

We will also be offering an online version of the Introduction to Digital Humanities Strand which will allow you access to several livestreamed morning and afternoon lectures as well as the opening and closing keynote lectures. Last year's online event attracted over 450 participants from every continent and every time zone.

Participants follow one workshop strand throughout the week, supplementing their training with up to three expert guest lectures. 

Strands

An Introduction to Digital Humanities
This lecture-based survey strand gives you a thorough overview of the theory and practice of Digital Humanities. Drawing on expertise from across the University of Oxford and our national and international collaborators, and on the University's library collections, it will appeal to anyone new to the field, or curious to broaden their understanding of the range of work the Digital Humanities encompass. Those attending in person will participate in sessions each morning and afternoon including the lectures, but will also participare in additional demonstrations and practical workshops each afternoon. Those attending online will join lectures each morning and be able to ask questions to the lecturers digitally. 

Applied Data Analysis
This workshop offers an introduction to data analysis techniques of practical use to humanities scholars and GLAM professionals. Topics include: data formats (XML, JSON), the Python data analysis stack (Pandas), how to get from messy to tidy data, basics of data analysis and visualization, advanced topics (modelling) and applications (topic modelling), best practices to communicate and share your results (licensing, repositories). Classes are hands-on and interactive, as we will work with real-world examples of metadata (e.g., the British Library catalog), text (e.g., historical newspapers) and relational data (e.g., social networks). Attendees will have the opportunity to work on their own projects and/or on proposed exercises. 

When Archives Become Digital
What happens when archives become digital? How are digital archives made? Who does it? Where do they do it? And why? In the course of addressing some of these questions, this strand will help its participants to frame and negotiate some of the major considerations in making and working with digital and digitalised archives. Through practical sessions and theoretical discussions, participants will gain insight into the possibilities and challenges presented by digital archives and working with cultural heritage materials digitally. Working with both digitised and born digital materials, participants will be introduced to a number of core concepts and digital tools for collecting, cleaning and processing data for and from digital archives, as well as open-source solutions that can be used for cataloging, enriching, and publishing digital and digitised materials Hands-on sessions will be complemented by lecture and seminar-style discussions of issues surrounding digital archival practice. These will help participants to frame the creation and use of digital archives within their theoretical, political, ethical, cultural, and technical contexts, and enable them to make more informed decisions in their future interactions with digital archives. 

Linked Data
This workshop is an introduction to the theories and practices of capturing, querying, and publishing information online using the Linked Data method. Participants will learn about the theory behind Linked Data, and discuss challenges, opportunities, and the ethical considerations in using this methodology. During the workshop, participants will complete the workflow for converting tabular data into RDF (the Linked Data format).

From Text to Tech
This hands-on workshop offers an introduction to natural language processing in Python, from processing texts to extracting meaning from them, as well as the basics of automated semantic analysis with machine learning. We will focus on practical applications (from preprocessing texts to enriching them with linguistic knowledge via part-of-speech tagging or syntactic parsing) and we will show how to work with raw, semi-structured, and tabular data. We will show the basics of topic modelling, and how this technique can be used for humanities research in order to explore the content of large collections. Finally, we will provide an overview of semantic analysis using word embeddings, and how this technique can be used for a large variety of humanities research, such as tracking semantic change or understanding biases in a corpus. At the end of the workshop, participants will have acquired basic practical skills and knowledge on how Python can be used for processing humanities textual data. They will leave with an understanding of key aspects of natural language processing and how these can be applied to their research in the humanities.

Crowdsourced Research
This workshop will consider public, collaborative research methods, particularly crowdsourcing, in the context of digital humanities. Aimed at researchers of all backgrounds, participants will engage with current and historical issues around crowdsourcing; propose, evaluate and discuss individual projects of their own making; and learn about best practices for social engagement with volunteers, long-term project health and sustainability. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how to approach crowdsourced research in a way that balances data quality and ethical volunteer engagement. Over the course of the week, in addition to discussion and reflection, participants will design and build a crowdsourcing project prototype with their own dataset, using the Zooniverse Project Builder. Participants should arrive for the workshop prepared with a project concept and example data (for example, 50 digital images of objects, books, or contents of archival collections—an ideal dataset is one for which the same line of questioning can be applied to each image). Participants will discuss their projects and the design and building process with the group. Morning sessions on this strand will be lecture and discussion-based, afternoon work sessions will allow participants to incorporate concepts from the morning sessions into their own crowdsourcing projects.

An Introduction to TEI
This workshop combines taught and practical sessions with case-studies introducing the use of the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), with a focus on the representation and publishing of primary sources. TEI is a very broad and flexible standard, so we will also concentrate on how TEI can best be used in specific research contexts. We will showcase a number of projects in the fields of digital editing, text-analysis and publication. Case studies will cover both specific textual phenomena and those common to diverse media and genres. Core aspects of TEI to be covered in the hands-on exercise sessions include structural elements of texts, metadata, representing people, places, dates and groups, the transcription and description of documents, encoding correspondence, and how to query, transform and publish your texts. No previous experience with markup, XML, TEI, or editing is assumed. Participants will leave with a grounding based on practical experience in what the TEI can do to represent both the physical and the linguistic features of documents, how it can inform the analysis of texts, and how it can form part of a publication pathway.

Digital Cultural Heritage
This strand introduces methods for recording, analysing and displaying cultural heritage (sites, material and visual culture). This includes the digital capture of objects, the creation of 3D models, and the employment of these models in interactive immersive experiences.

Humanities Data
This strand introduces a variety of approaches to dealing with humanities data. It covers modelling, structuring, and working with data, plus longer-term curation and preservation. Data types discussed include textual, tabular, image-based and time-based media. Attendees will hear from presenters experienced in working with these methods, and be given the opportunity to try some of them for themselves via practical exercises.The goal is to equip researchers to select solutions that will work for them. 

Fees

• Standard Rate - £855
• Academic/Education/Not for Profit: (you work for an educational institution, library, charity or not-for-profit organisation in any capacity) - £750 
• Students (you are enrolled as a full-time or part-time student at any educational institution at any level) - £650 
• Virtual attendance for the Introduction to Digital Humanities Strand - £100 

Registration closes June 23, 2022.