Julia Damerow Reflects on Digital Humanities Deutschland Conference

Thanks to a grant from Digital Humanities Deutschland and the Volkswagen Foundation I was able to present a poster at the DHD Unconference that was held as part of the Digital Humanities 2012 (dh2012). The conference took place in July at the University of Hamburg in Germany.

My poster was about my dissertation project that deals with representing statements in texts as networks of concepts. Contextual information, such as who made a statement or when it was made, plays a key role in the analysis of conceptual networks by using computational tools. During my poster presentation I got a lot of positive feedback and had many interesting conversations about the realization of my project.

At the dh2012, I was able to gain a better understanding of digital humanities as a new field. Participants would address questions like what a curriculum for digital humanities should include or what problems the digital humanities are facing. The take home message of the conference for me is that, although the field is still very young, researchers are working on many exciting projects, but there is still a long way to go.