Digital Humanities and Public Culture: Projects and Engagement

This course allows students to develop and critically assess a range of digital humanities skills, research methods, and best practices. Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with cultural collections and institutions and develop projects designed to address the ongoing digitisation of our shared cultural record. Students will be supported to propose and build digital projects that could be used by cultural institutions large or small. These might include research tools, public outreach and engagement, educational, or, games and creative responses to cultural data sets. Projects can engage with museums, galleries, archives or libraries. Projects are developed over the entire semester from pitch to project plan, prototype for user testing and a final digital project accompanied by an exegesis. These projects are expected to be situated in the broader field and to engage with critical, ethical, theoretical issues. Students are given the opportunity to liaise directly with curators and other experts from institutions to pitch ideas and to develop skills in collaboration and project planning. No technical skills are required and students are supported to upskill from their own level of experience. Support is offered to work with a range of software and digital methods, and final projects can be published online using digital platforms. Students from a range of backgrounds are welcome and the course is designed to support students from computer science as well students studying in the humanities and social sciences.