The humanities-based projects within iiD couple big data analysis with the interpretive work usually done by humanists.
The data sets for these projects include collections of texts, images, videos, and audio—in other words, they are digital archives broadly understood. From analyzing the numerous editions of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to understanding the narrative created by the thousands of photojournalistic depictions of Syrian refugees to virtually restoring medieval art, these groups ask traditional humanistic questions, but explore them with quantitative as well as qualitative analysis.
Why Data+ for the Humanities?
These humanities projects originate from English, art history, and mathematics faculty and graduate students. The sponsors and mentors direct projects that represent the historical, methodological, and theoretical interests of their own research and teaching areas. But by developing these projects through Data+, they are able to work collaboratively with undergraduate students to meet time consuming technical and computational challenges through skill sets that are often outside the usual humanities repertoire. At the same time, undergraduate students are introduced to humanistic studies outside of the usual classroom setting, learning how to work attentively and closely with archives and conceptual tools for ten weeks over the summer.