Day of Digital Humanities (DH)

A Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities is an event where digital humanists from around the world document what they do. Day of DH began in 2009, at the University of Alberta and has been hosted by other institutions since that time. Day of DH has also been adopted by specific language communities that extend beyond national borders. On 24 April 2023, the Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) in collaboration with the University Library’s Digital Scholarship Lab hosted the first-ever Day of DH on the University campus to celebrate the development of digital humanities.

We were honoured to have invited Professor Donald Sturgeon, creator and administrator of Chinese Text Project (ctext.org) and Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Durham University (UK) as the keynote speaker. In the keynote talk “Working with pre-modern Chinese texts in the digital age”, Prof. Donald Sturgeon showed the audiences how enormous amount of pre-modern Chinese texts could be manipulated and analysed with the help of DH.

Topic: Working with pre-modern Chinese texts in the digital age
Pre-modern Chinese texts have been objects of scholarship for hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of years. Over this time, technological innovations have repeatedly transformed how scholars interact with these materials in their everyday work. This talk focuses on developments and changes to these modes of interaction since the beginning of the digital age. In particular, it will focus on the role of different digital representations of content, how these connect to one another, and their advantages and limitations in practice.

Just before lunch, participants had a guided tour at the Digital Scholarship Lab and the MakerSpace to understand how the library DH supports and 3-D printing sparks greater creativity and collaboration in solving problems in different fields.

Prof. McManus, Acting Director of Digital Humanities Initiatives Program gave an introduction on the upcoming DH courses and programs in the next semester.

To echo the theme of Day of DH, RIH invited Faculty of Arts students from different universities to share their passion on digital research methodologies. Professor Javier Cha, Digital Humanities in the Department of History, HKU and his students shared and exchanged ideas of their on-going DH projects with the participants.

Date: 24 April 2023 (Monday)
Time: 10am – 5pm
Venue: Digital Scholarship Lab (G/F, University Library), the Chinese University of Hong Kong

10:00 Keynote talk by Prof. Donald Sturgeon “Working with pre-modern Chinese texts in the digital age”

11:30 DS Lab Tour & 3-D Printing Demo

13:00 Lunch (will be provided for full-day participants)

14:15 Introduction to DH course & programming

15:15 Short Break

15:30 DH project presentations

17:00 Conclusion