„Digital Humanities Experiments“

The German Historical Institute Paris (DHIP) invites those interested to attend its conference on “Digital Humanities Experiments” on 11/12 July 2015 at DHI Paris, 8, rue du Parc-Royal, 75003 Paris. The conference is organised in cooperation with the European Sciences Foundation – Scientific Review Group HUM and the Institut d’études avancées (IEA). Further information can be found here. Admission is free, but please register via event [at] dhi-paris.fr (event[at]dhi-paris[dot]fr).

The conference, organised by Mareike König (DHIP), Suzanne Dumouchel (DHIP), Lisa Bolz (DHIP), Claudine Moulin (IEA/University of Trier), Pierre Mounier (OpenEdition), and Anne Baillot (Humboldt University Berlin), starts off on Thursday, 11th June 2015, at 6 p.m. with a traditional conference format: a keynote speech by Julianne Nyhan, assistant professor in Digital Information Studies at UCL’s Department of Information Studies. Her talk will be on “New paths through the histories of Digital Humanities: uncovering hidden contributions to Busa’s Index Thomisticus” (abstract). This keynote will be discussed by Claudia Mueller-Birn, assistant professor for Web Science/Human-Centered Computing at the Institute of Computer Science at Free University of Berlin. A live stream of the keynote will be available.

Friday, 12th June 2015 will begin at 9 a.m. with a presentation of the game “winnobel” by David Chavalarias (ISC-PIF, Paris). Implemented as an online multi-player game, “winnobel” allows people to experiment different research policy settings on the collective dynamics of science. This presentation will be streamed live. Different teams of conference participants will play the game during the lunch break and in the afternoon.

ConverStations
During the next section, participants will experiment with a highly dialogic form of event: the idea of Conversation-Stations (short: ConverStations) is modelled after World Cafés: “Participants move between a series of tables where they continue the discussion in response to a set of questions, which are predetermined and focused on the specific goals of each World Café” [Wikipedia: World Café]. There will be eight tables with different topics, six are predefined and animated by invited participants: Claudine Moulin (IEA/University of Trier), Milena Žic Fuchs (ESF), Sean Ryder (NUI Galway), Brian Sandberg (IEA), Suzanne Dumouchel (DHIP), Pierre Mounier (OpenEdition). Two tables can be proposed by the audience on the spot. There will be three discussion-rounds, each lasting approximately 20 minutes. Every participant will choose in advance which of the three tables they want to attend by drawing cards. Two observers – Anne Baillot (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Mareike König (DHIP) will monitor, take notes on, and document the experiment. After a coffee break, the ConverStations will report their results to the audience, and results as well as observations concerning this form of event will be discussed and evaluated. This session summing up the results will be live streamed.

The afternoon holds four live experiments in different laboratories:

• “Aggregate, visualize and browse information about researchers and their activities”,
• “Open analytical ecosystems for digital humanities”,
• “Texts in a Laboratory”,
• “Machine translation”.

During the lunch break, there will be time to visit three lounges we have installed in the beautiful “Hotel Duret de Chevry”, home of the DHI Paris. Participants are invited to walk around, maps of the building will be distributed, indicating the location of the lounges. The lounges are divided into an Open Peer Review Lounge, a Media Lounge, and a Secret Lounge.

Leading up to the conference is a blog carnival on “Experimente in den Digital Humanities” (experiments in the DH), inviting the participation of all interested.