This symposium on digital cultures, big data and society focuses on questions of close and distant reading and the critical functions of digital tools in the humanities. The symposium will consider some of the pressing questions in the fields of digital humanities. It will also mark the launch of the Industrial Memories project, a digital re-reading of the Ryan Report.

Keynote speakers

Professor Alison Booth (University of Virginia) is Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and Academic Director of the Scholars’ Lab and director of Collective Biographies of Women (CBW), a database and study of networked nonfiction.

Professor Geoffrey Rockwell (University of Alberta) is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta. He is a co-developer of Voyant Tools <voyant-tools.org>, a suite of text analysis tools, for which he and his co-developer were awarded the CSDH/SCHN 2017 Outstanding Contribution Award. Rockwell is currently the Director of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study.

Programme

Thursday 15th (Royal Irish Academy)

1.00 - Registration

1.30 - Digital Books

• Enhanced not “Distant”: Examining Independence in the Novels of Austen, Edgeworth and Owenson. - S.H. Ker (Maynooth University)
• At-scale Questions: Patterns in the Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing- Marie-Louise Coolahan (NUIG)
• Quantitative Bibliography and the Digital Book Trades­ - Justin Tonra (NUIG)

3.00 - Coffee Break

3.30 - Industrial Memories Project Launch - Emilie Pine, Susan Leavy, Mark Keane (UCD)

5.00 - Keynote: Professor Alison Booth (University of Virginia) - Biographical Networks, Gendered Types, and the Challenge of Mid-Range Reading

Friday 16th (UCD Humanities Institute)

9.30 - Digital Tools in the Humanities

• Locating Digital Humanities within the Humanities - Michael Pidd (University of Sheffield)
• Integrating corpus-based tools in translation practices: methodological and professional implications - Sandrine Peraldi (UCD)
• The future of collaboration - Mark Stansbury and David Kelly (NUIG)
• 1916 Degrees of Separation - Padraig McCarron (Maynooth University)

11.45 - Humanities in the Digital Age

• The Two Cultures in the Digital Age - Michelle Doran (TCD)
• Humanities and Linguistic data in the Digital Age - Victoria Garnett (TCD)
• Humanities Approaches to Big Data - Georgina Nugent-Folan (TCD)

1.15 - Lunch (provided)

2.00 - Keynote: Professor Geoffrey Rockwell (University of Alberta) - Thinking-Through Big Data in the Humanities’

3.00 - Coffee Break

3.30 - Literature, Society and Cultural Analytics

• Constructing Social Networks of Irish and British Fiction, 1800-1922' - Derek Greene (UCD)
• Reconsidering the fictional letter in 19th century novels - Karen Wade (UCD)
• Style and authorship in the Edinburgh Review - Francesca Benatti (Open University)
• ‘Nations, Networks and Plots: James Joyce and Rosamund Jacob’ - Gerardine Meaney (UCD)
  

The first day of the Symposium will be held in the Member's Room in the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street. The second day will be held at the Humanities Institute, University College Dublin.