The Material Digital Humanities seminar is organised by Gabriel Bodard (Digital Humanities, University of London, UK) and Chiara Palladino (Department of Classics, Furman University, USA) in 2025. This series presents a range of discussions around materiality and the research possibilities offered by digital methods and approaches. Beyond just the value of digitization and computational research to the study of material culture, we are especially interested in theoretical and digital approaches to the question of materiality itself. We do not restrict ourselves to any period of history or academic discipline, but want to encourage interdisciplinarity and collaborative work, and the valuable exchange of ideas enabled by cross-pollination of languages, areas of history, geography and cultures.
For this year’s seminar, the organisers have arranged a conversation between several of the contributors to a volume that appeared a year and a half ago, on the relationships between materiality and the digital in cultural heritage, and other scholars working in related areas.
Palladino C. & Bodard G. (eds.) 2023. Can’t Touch This: Digital Approaches to Materiality in Cultural Heritage. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bcv
As with previous years, this series represents a wider conversation around issues relating to material culture, heritage and materiality and the ways in which digital methods and the discipline of digital humanities engages with them. Even traditional areas of DH focus including text, images and (born-)digital data suffer from ignoring their material and other contexts, be they spatial, chronological, scholarly engagement, ethical and historical settings.
Please do join us and contribute to these discussions!
- Wednesday March 5, 2025. Rebecca Kahn (University of Vienna), Skulls, skin and names: The ethics of managing heritage collections data online (Youtube link to be added)
- Monday March 10, 2025. Dipali Mathur (Ulster University, Belfast), The Limits to Green Growth: Rematerialising UK’s Pathway to Net Zero (Registration)
- Monday March 24, 2025. Chijioke Okorie (University of Pretoria), Digital treatment of African cultural heritage: Shifting landmarks and implications for copyright exceptions for archives (Registration)
- Friday May 2, 2025. Martina Filosa (Universität Köln), Usama Gad (Ain Shams, Cairo), Gabriel Bodard (University of London), Making the Implicit Explicit: Digital editions of ancient text-bearing objects (Registration)
- Tuesday May 13, 2025. Rita Lucarelli (Berkeley), Ancient Egypt Reimagined: Teaching about the Past Through Digital Humanities (Registration)
- Tuesday June 3, 2025. Francesco Bianchini (Cambridge University), Sanskrit inscriptions as tangible artefacts: exploring digital tools (Registration)
All seminars are free and online only. Please register for the zoom link.
Full details and updates are in the SAS Digital Humanities calendar.
