Digital Humanities Research

Research is methodological, interdisciplinary, and collaboratively supervised. It focuses on the intersection of digital tools and methods with one or more artefacts or processes studied in the humanities or interpretative social sciences. It varies in emphasis on practical, experimental and theoretical work. Modelling may be used to raise the epistemological question (how we know what we somehow know), to explore implications of evidence too abundant, fragmentary, elusive or complex for other approaches or to develop entirely new views of a subject. Theoretical models may be developed for poorly understood or emergent digital phenomena. Examples include reconstruction of historical persons from scattered evidence; imagining of diasporic communities online; modelling of literary context; exploration of the relationship between verbal description and visual representation; or formation of identity in online games.; or investigation of Victorian grass-roots politics through the vocabulary of speeches.

PhD candidates meet with supervisors regularly throughout the academic year. A PhD seminar meets every three weeks, in which students present their research to each other and discuss its progress. Space, equipment and technical help are provided as facilities permit. All candidates are invited to participate in the ongoing departmental seminar in Humanities Computing, in the online discussion group Humanist and to attend the London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship, held in conjunction with the Institute of English Studies. Attendance at the annual Digital Humanities conference is sponsored whenever possible.

PhD candidates are required to take a research methods course in the basics of the digital humanities and may be offered additional technical training if required. Additional requirements may be made by the supervisor(s), especially for those primarily in the social sciences.