An Foras Feasa launches MA in Digital Humanities...

CnaG

"An Foras Feasa launches MA in Digital Humanities" - I've gotten this email a few times in my NUIM inbox so today I actually read it, and now I'm curious.

Does anyone a) know what digitial humanities is (I've looked at pretty much every link on their website and I'm still not sure) and b) think it'd be too difficult for an arts graduate with only fairly basic computing skills?

I'll probably contact them directly, but in the mean time I just thought I'd ask these here in case somebody can answer

catho_monster

Check out the Digital Humaties Observatory (at the RIA) website, might give you more info.
http://dho.ie/

Alt_Grrr

There was a module run in the CS department for Arts Students called "CS260: Humanities Computing 1"

Module Info http://www.nuim.ie/modules/CS260

CnaG

Thanks

Moonbeam

http://graduatestudies.nuim.ie/prospective-postgrads/taught-courses/arts-celtic-studies-and-philosophy/mh50f

You got me curious I had to go look it up:)

TouchingVirus

Does anyone a) know what digitial humanities is (I've looked at pretty much every link on their website and I'm still not sure)

Well the humanities are subjects such ancient and modern languages, history, religion, music, painting and other Arts things. Digital Humanities is all about using the latest technology to enhance your research and/or skillset, create tools that can be used by researchers to improve their own research, creating and modelling your data so that it can be implemented into Digital Archives or websites on the internet etc. etc. It's a pretty broad field and is always expanding. Some people even use Digital Humanities type projects to teach - for example there was a computer exhibition set up in the National Library from December 2007-October 2009 that allowed users to search for ancestors who emigrated to Europe from 1600-1800. It was researched by the Irish in Europe project and was one cool piece of software It was called Strangers to Citizens.

I'm not sure what your own area of interest is, but do feel free to come into An Foras Feasa & have a chat with the folks there who can show you the new facilities, some of the current work the PhD students are doing and generally tell you all you'll ever need to know about Digital Humanities to decide if it's right for you. An Foras Feasa is located on the first floor of the new Humanities and Social Sciences building on the North Campus (the new building beside the Hume Building). Head up the stairs, turn left towards the Hume building and go to the fourth office from the end (Laura Gallagher). Or drop an email to foras.feasa@nuim.ie

Also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities

and b) think it'd be too difficult for an arts graduate with only fairly basic computing skills?

No, it won't be too difficult or rather it shouldn't be if you're willing to learn. The theory behind DH, the tools and things like XML are taught to students. I'm not sure on the computer skill requirements of the course but since a lot of Arts students are interested in the field of DH it shouldn't really be an issue, they're not just looking for computer experts or anything

philologos

CnaG - Digital Humanities, is the process of either representing historical or other humanities documents in digital format. It can also mean representing data in these documents so that it might be useful for further study and examination.

We did a module on it in Computer Science last year, and it was quite interesting.