DHSITE 2019

Digital Humanities Summer Institute: Technologies East took place the week of 13-17 May 2019 on the University of Ottawa’s main campus. Workshops offered in 2019 included Introduction to Text Encoding, led by Dr. Constance Crompton, Social Media Analysis led by Prasadith Buddhitha, Introduction to Linked Open Data led by Catie Sahadath, Data Visualisation led by Dr. Jarno van der Kolk, and Digital Composition led by Julian Bertino.

Continuing its tradition of blending DH training with keynote lectures by leaders in the field, DHSITE 2019 will feature even more opportunities throughout the week for participants to come together and engage in critical dialogue about issues particular to DH research. These sessions were key moments of collective discussion and reflection throughout the week’s events.

We featured two keynote speakers in May 2019. Marie-Hélène Roy-Gagnon from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa joined us to speak about her work on the innovative iBALSAC project team, a project designing infrastructure for high resolution mapping of the French Canadian population that aims to create a multisectoral platform for cutting edge research in biological, biomedical and social sciences. Jason Camlot from the Department of English at Concordia University who introduced the audience to the SpokenWeb Project. He discussed the great potential for humanities research of conceptualizing collaborative projects around unique yet largely unused collections of cultural heritage materials.

Marie-Hélène Roy-Gagnon speaks about the research objectives of the i-BALSAC project, which is financed by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.

Jason Camlot speaks about the great potential for building collaborative projects around collections of audio recordings, based on his example of the SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb project.

In addition to our keynote presentations, we introduced two roundtables (hosted by University of Ottawa Librarian Felicity Tayler) addressing key issues in DH scholarship, including Research Data Management and Ethics and Feminist Methods in DH Scholarship. We are also collaborated with local and national organisations located in Ottawa throughout the week, including a community research panel featuring curators David Pantalony and Tom Everett from the Canada Science and Technology Museum who presented their collaborative work with professors and students at the University of Ottawa and a presentation by an Ottawa Art Gallery curator who spoke about how feminist methodologies impact her curation practices.

DHSITE concluded with a new event that showcased of the work institute participants through a series of short presentations. Participants included Dr. Stefanie Haustein, doctoral student Pascale Dangoisse, and Visiting Student Researcher Alice Defours.