e-Science for the arts and
humanities
Sheila Anderson
Arts and Humanities Data Service
King’s College London
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e-Science and the arts and humanities
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Funded by the AHRC through its ICT Programme
Nine months – December 05 – August 06
Sheila Anderson – PI
Luke Blaxill – RA
Katrin Weidemann – project administrator
Input from Lorna Hughes, Tobias Blanke, Stuart
Dunn (arts and humanities e-science support
centre)
• Research practitioners
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Scoping Survey: Aims and Objectives
• Raise awareness and understanding of escience, and how e-science might relate to
and support the different disciplines within the
arts and humanities
• Enable scholars engaging with ICT in their
research practice to find about and take
advantage of the outputs and tools arising
from the e-science and e-social science
programmes
• Assist the AHRC in the development of an
arts and humanities e-Science research
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agenda
The Scoping Survey
• Scoping survey methodology
– Identify, collate and analyse information on escience technologies, projects and outputs
– Consult the community to discuss the role an escience agenda in supporting their research
practice – series of expert seminars
– Create an on-line information base for consultation
by arts and humanities scholars with information
on projects (both science and arts and humanities)
and tools
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Expert Seminars key to this process
• Exchange ideas and knowledge
• Identify use of ICT in research practice and ‘grand
challenges and opportunities’
• Identify e-Science potential
• Identify priority areas for research and practice
• Recommendations for future action
– Priorities for research
– Priorities for tools development
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Seminars led by……
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Library and Information Studies – Melissa Terras
Archaeology – William Kilbride
Literary and Textual Studies – Peter Robinson
History – Mark Greengrass
Visual Arts – Sue Gollifer
Performing Arts – Angela Picini
Linguistics and Languages – Paul Rayson
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Defining e-science for the arts and
humanities?
• e-Science is about an enabling infrastructure –
tools , technologies, computing power etc. –
supporting research
• For the arts and humanities: the development and
deployment of a networked infrastructure and
culture through which resources – be they
processing power, data, expertise, or person power
– can be shared in a secure environment, and in
which new forms of collaboration can emerge, and
new and advanced methodologies explored
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Research Challenges
• Massive amounts of source material to be digitised
and captured in digital form: creating an A&H
data deluge….
• Recursive nature of scholarship in a digital age:
unrealised potential
• Integrating conceptual models and data
• Static vs Dynamic representations of knowledge
• Cross domain collaborative methods
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Fundamental Principles
• Truly be an arts and humanities agenda
• Must come from, and be embedded in, research practice
and research needs
• BUT be innovative and push barriers: innovation –
incubation – stabilisation cycle
• Be sensitive to those less engaged
• Inclusive – capable of embedding in everyday research
practice
• Be about empowerment and democratisation
• Enable new forms of collaborations across domains and
sectors
• Re-imagine the concept of ‘e-Science’ and challenge
existing e-Science technologies
• International, scalable, sustainable
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What might Arts and Humanities eScience Look Like?
• It would understand and involve users
– Methodologies of use must better inform creation,
curation, management, access, tools development
– User friendly, easy to install and use tools
– Cross domain and cross-sector
– Empowering and open
– Respecting IPR and copyright
– Deep log analysis, anthropological studies etc. to
understand user behaviours
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What might Arts and Humanities e-Science
Look Like?
• It would address content needs:
– Massive digitisation programme
– Existing, highly dispersed content joined up through the
grid and appropriate tools – ontology connectors
– Deep mining using different methods for connecting;
data and text mining
– Community engagement, folksonomies
– Non-textual searching for sound, video
– Large scale images, moving images, sound, etc.
managed and accessed through the grid
– Capture the creative process, making and research
– Annotation, collation, visualisation, simulation
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– Content from across disciplines
What might Arts and Humanities e-Science
Look Like?
• It would enable collaboration:
– Strong possibilities – from text to performance
– Access grid, VRO, Virtual communities
– New forms of research characterised by
democratisation and openness – challenging!
– New forms of collaboration – across disciplines and
domains and including shared curation
– Shared creation, curation, analysis of shared content
– Dynamic, interactive BUT secure and trusted
– Push the access grid further for collaborative research
and teaching
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What might Arts and Humanities e-Science
Look Like?
• Characterised by innovation and experimentation
• It would push methodological barriers:
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Visualisation
Simulation
Geo spatial and geo-temporal
Creative process
Annotation and text analysis, image analysis
• It would need support:
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Institutional
Cluster computing rather than grid?
Training
Tools
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More Information
• Check out:
• www.ahessc.ac.uk
• www.ahds.ac.uk/projects/ - look under
Research for e-Science Scoping Survey
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