DH Blog 1: What is DH?

(Image credit: the online magazine of the Getty)

When I first heard of Digital Humanities, I honestly did not think much about it. Having just finished a course on Corpus Linguistics, and seeing as that was also a subject dealt with in DH, my only thought was that DH would teach me digital skills that would help in any linguistic or humanities-oriented research. And in a way, I was right to come to that conclusion, but on the other hand: I didn’t know anything yet.

The six words in the image above best explain to me what DH actually is (at least, at this moment in time). It is a research field with particular interest in the digital evolution happening now, and how this digital dimension can influence and ameliorate any academic studies. That is where the multidisciplinary component comes in, and where it gets interesting. DH, as the name itself already kind of implies (“Digital”+”Humanities”) can be perceived as a discipline consisting out of the collaboration with other disciplines and cultures, such as the computer sciences, linguistics, social sciences, and many more.

And this is the most innovative DH concept to me: A research field, that floats between the state of being a unified DH community and being a community made of many different research fields, that all seem to benefit from some new digital skillsets. When thinking about it, DH could launch a digital revolution in other not-so-digitally-inclined research fields, and could even dissolve as a research field all together! Of course, nobody really knows what the future brings, but the question does remain as to when DH will take a solid stance on being a unified or divided field.

In my opinion however, such a stance does not seem at all really necessary. DH was born out of scientific collaborations across different research fields. It uses these different backgrounds to invent new creative tools and skills, to revolutionize the academic world, to drag even the most dusty and ancient to the digital society of the 21st century. And that’s not a bad thing. Innovation like promoted in the DH research field is what keeps things interesting, it keeps our minds sharp while thinking about where we are going, and where we came from.

That is why I think we need to keep adjusting what the meaning of DH is. We need to keep thinking in a critical way with maybe some core DH values to guide us. We cannot allow ourselves to get stuck in a static way of thinking: naming everyone a digital humanist while downgrading their previous background, looking at only one discipline or culture, or stopping after one successful experiment. We need to keep going, keep inventing.

For now, that is all, but as I said: I will keep going, keep exploring and keep updating myself and you on this exploration of DH!