DH Toolbox: Fall 2024

24 September: DH Coffee Break

What has everyone been up to the last year? Join us for a DH Toolbox coffee break to catch up with the DCN/DH community at uOttawa!

8 October: “What gets counted… counts.” Data feminist approaches to digital humanities research

STUDENTS from Big Data, Culture and Society will share their work applying a data feminist approach to research on targeted ad promotion, use of generative AI in fanfiction communities, computer science curricula, and more! Some of the students in this course are creating exhibits of their work. You can access them here: https://bit.ly/datafem-projects

English presentation.


22 October: The Around the World of Parliamentary Immunity: A Case Study of Comparative Legislative Research in Three Post-British Rule Parliaments

Parliamentary immunity is a significant aspect of parliamentary life. Created centuries ago by the British House of Commons, the system has influenced other national legislative bodies. However, little is known about the degree to which elements of the Westminster model have been inherited by parliaments. DR. SHLOMI BALABAN (postdoctoral fellow at uOttawa) is joining us to demonstrate how he’s using ArcGIS Storymaps alongside previously unpublished digitized archival materials to visually represent parliamentary connections as a form of “geo-digital genealogy” of the law.

English presentation.


5 November: Share the Air

Whose voices are heard on Canadian radio? Are stations in Canada complying meeting their CanCon requirements? Whose stories are preserved with station catalogues? DR. JADA WATSON (School of Information Studies at uOttawa) will discuss SongData’s latest study on representation within Canadian radio programming. Join us to learn more about which artists’s songs are being spun and which are not, and what steps could be taken to mitigate harmful programming practices on Canadian radio.

Download the presentation slides.

19 November: How can TEI and CIDOC-CRM Rewrite Archaeological Narratives?

As we harness the digital humanities’ potential, we can explore how their approaches, combined with written original sources, allow us to rethink the way knowledge is structured, shared and interoperable on the web. PhD Candidate ALICE DEFOURS (Dept. of Communication at uOttawa) will join us to share her doctoral research, which aims to publish a digital edition of a dataset of tangible artifacts that is interactive, critical, and enhanced by linked open data.

French presentation.


3 December: Not another bloody talk about ‘AI’; or, these things are interesting and may be useful with lots of caveats

The hype cycle around ‘ai’ induces whiplash, things move so fast. And for many reasons, the deployment of these – what shall we call them: neural models? Language models? Artificial (un)Intelligence? – are done in ways that diminish human dignity, or endanger us (think: energy demands). DR. SHAWN GRAHAM (Dept. of History at Carleton University) will join us to discuss his recent experience working with students on trying to grapple with what AI does to the doing of history, and share some of their initial conclusions from our year-long investigation.

Miss the presentation? Watch a similar presentation Dr. Graham delivered for the TETRARCHs project!

English presentation.