CDCS is delighted to announce that applications are open for the DH & RSE Summer School. The Summer School is co-organised by Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture & Society, Cambridge Digital Humanities, King’s Digital Lab and The Alan Turing Institute.
Since 2021 a partnership of UK institutions has been involved in the creation and delivery of a summer school aimed at researchers in the digital humanities who intend to professionalise their software engineering skills.
The event is co-organised by the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture & Society (Lucia Michielin), Cambridge Digital Humanities (Mary Chester-Kadwell, Jonathan Blaney), King’s Digital Lab (Neil Jakeman), and The Alan Turing Institute (Federico Nanni) and it is supported by the Data/Culture Project (AHRC Grant Ref: AH/Y00745X/1) and the Society of Research Software Engineering.
The event has been hosted in the past by The Alan Turing Institute and Cambridge Digital Humanities.
The 2024 Summer School, hosted at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, combines talks and practical activities and will explore how the intersection of digital humanities and software engineering is shaped across different UK institutions. Participants will have an opportunity to gain an invaluable insight into the roles and practices of Research Software Engineering in Digital Humanities research. Each day one of the partner institutions will take the lead in showcasing the practicalities of working in the field. Mornings will start with a series of presentations on matters ranging from careers in RSE to project life cycles. The afternoon sessions will consist of hands-on activities spanning topics such as effective data visualisation to sustainable coding and peer programming.
This event is aimed at those who have an interest in becoming a Research Software Engineer in the humanities, or using research software engineering practices in their current or future role. It is ideal for those who already have a few years of experience in coding and may be familiar with some computational methods within humanities projects.
It is meant to help prepare those who have worked in Digital Humanities for a few years to support them in moving into Research Software Engineering or to adopt RSE practices deeply into their technical research practice. Please note that coding itself will not be taught as you should already be familiar with a programming language (preferably with some knowledge of Python).
We are committed to creating a friendly and respectful place for learning, teaching and contributing for all. We encourage participation by individuals from groups who have been historically under-represented in the software engineering and data science sectors in the UK. All participants are expected to adhere to our Code of Conduct, which is set out as part of our Terms & Conditions Document.
Thanks to the support of The Alan Turing Institute and The Society of Research Software Engineering we will be able to provide a limited number of bursaries to cover costs towards travel and accommodations. They will be allocated based on the following criteria:
If the number of bursary applications which meet our criteria exceeds the number of bursaries available, we will assign them based on how well applications are aligned with our target audience (see: "Audience & Prerequisites").
Please note that available funds will not cover travel for attendees arriving from outside the UK.
More information can be found in the Terms & Conditions Document.
Thanks to the support of The Alan Turing Institute, through the Sustainable Communities Around Arts and Humanities Datasets and Tools Project, participation will be free for those who are offered a place on the course.
To apply, you should fill out the form, providing general information about yourself (email, affiliation) and then replying to three questions which will be used for our selection process.
The Summer School has a limited number of places available: candidates will be assessed on both their application and how well they are aligned with our target audience (see: "Audience & Prerequisites").
| Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centre for Data, Culture & Society | Cambridge Digital Humanities | King’s Digital Lab | The Alan Turing Institute | ||||
| 08:40-09:10 | Registration | 09:00-09:15 | Introduction and Society of RSE presentation | ||||
| 09:10-09:30 | Welcome and Introduction | 09:15-10:30 | DH & RSE at Cambridge | 09:15-09:30 | Welcome and Introduction | 09:15-09:30 | Welcome and Introduction |
| 09:30-10:30 | Gaelic NLP | 09:30-10:30 | Digital creative approaches for research and engagement | 09:30-10:30 | MapReader, open-source software library for analysing large map collections | ||
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break | 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break | 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break | 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-12:30 | DH&RSE at Edinburgh | 11:00-12:30 | Sustainable code for research | 11:00-12:30 | Digital creative approaches for research and engagement | 11:00-11:45 | DH & RSE practices: the Seshat Project |
| 11:45-12:30 | DH & RSE practices: Living with Machines | ||||||
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | 12:30-13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30-15:00 | Data visualisation with R | 13:30-15:00 | Best practices in crafting code for research | 13:30-15:00 | Constructing an Immersive experience from a research scenario | 13:30-15:00 | Collaborative coding |
| 15:00-15:30 | Coffee Break | 15:00-15:30 | Coffee Break | 15:00-15:30 | Coffee Break | 15:00-15:30 | Coffee Break |
| 15:30-17:00 | Custom data visualisation with D3 | 15:30-17:00 | Best practices in crafting code for research | 15:30-17:00 | Constructing an Immersive experience from a research scenario | 15:30-17:00 | Collaborative coding |
| 20:00-22:00 | Ceilidh Club | 17:30-19:00 | Reception | 17:30-19:00 | Drinks at the Pear Tree | ||
The learning experience was great and I am very happy to have participated.
Lucia’s main responsibilities involve managing and developing the Centre for Data, Culture & Society Training Programme, a programme which focuses on identifying and providing a variety of training on applied digital research to respond to researchers’ needs across the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science. She has considerable experience in designing and delivering training courses focused on data skills and digital research methods, and can apply specialist technical expertise and knowledge to developing a digital research methods training programme. Having been awarded a PhD in Classics from the University of Edinburgh in 2019, Lucia’s research background in the Digital Humanities has equipped her with a great deal of experience in applying digital methods to research projects, as well as the ability to support the development of data-intensive projects.
Mary is a Senior Software Engineer at Cambridge University Library. Originally from a humanities background, she has a PhD in the landscape archaeology and material culture of early medieval England using computational methods. For CDH Labs, Mary advises researchers on developing the technical aspects of their projects and works on a wide variety of software. She teaches coding and software engineering practices for CDH Learning and is an approved supervisor for the MPhil in Digital Humanities. Mary is a Trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering.
Federico is a Senior Research Data Scientist at The Alan Turing Institute, working as part of the Research Engineering Group. He is the REG lead for Fundamental AI. He has a background in Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval, in the context of Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science. Prior to joining the Institute, he completed a PhD in History of Technology at the University of Bologna, focusing on the use of web archives in historical research and worked for five years at the Data and Web Science Group of the University of Mannheim.
Neil joined the Department of Digital Humanities as a Research Developer in 2011 to help steer development in the spatial turn that DH research that was enjoying at that time. Arriving with a background in environmental analysis, spatial statistics, his interests within the department broadened to encompass the diversity of topics in the department’s portfolio. His role within the Lab has now evolved to encompass cultivating new projects and relationships in the digital community and beyond as a Project Analyst. As one of three permanent analysts in the Lab, Neil oversees has particular responsibility over those which involve digital creative practice in emerging technologies.
Jonathan is Digital Humanities Research Software Engineer at CDH. Previously he worked on Digital Humanities projects at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and before that at the Oxford Digital Library in the Bodleian. Going back even further, he worked as a lexicographer at Oxford University Press, across the range of English dictionaries and thesauruses
