Abstract
This is a half-day workshop designed as a participant-led knowledge sharing platform for digitally-oriented labs in the humanities and social sciences. Individuals managing labs (e.g., directors and software engineers), those affiliated to labs (e.g., project coordinators, researchers, educators. etc.), those who make use of labs (teaching staff, researchers etc.), or who have an interest in developing a new digital lab or expanding existing ones, are welcome to participate. The workshop will provide the opportunity to share experiences and learn from others on both the intellectual and operational function of labs, aiming to exchange good practices for successful and sustainable digital labs. Two existing labs of differing scales and levels of maturity will lead the facilitation of the workshop: The Plant (Playground and Laboratory for New Technologies) at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University and King’s Digital Lab (KDL), King’s College London.
Background
Labs are becoming increasingly embedded in digital scholarship in the humanities. According to El Khatib et al. (2020) a lab is “a hub for digital scholarship that facilitates and provides both physical and virtual space for collaboration, access to tools and resources, and services for researchers broadly defined, including students, faculty, and staff from across campus and citizen scholars from the local community.”
As with many elements of digital scholarship there are different applications of the associated infrastructure and labels used to describe them, such as labs or centres. There are also more epistemic questions as to whether digital labs act as producers of research subjects or containers for them (Malazita et al, 2020). El Khatib et al. (2020) divide digital scholarship centres into two categories “commons-type”, which are service driven, and “lab- or makerspace-type”,which are research-driven and faculty-directed (El Khatib et al., 2020, 12). Pawlicka-Deger (2020) created a typology: “the center-type lab, the techno-science lab, the work station-type lab, the social challenges-centric lab, and virtual lab”, arguing that there has been a shift from laboratories as physical places towards more conceptual ones.
Regardless of the terms we use for such infrastructure, and their exact orientation, there is a certain amount of common ground on the positioning of digital labs within the research workflow, while emphasising their vibrant and innovative nature as well as differences based on local contexts (El Khatib, 2020, 13). Alongside the enthusiasm in the uptake of digital approaches to humanities scholarship, such infrastructures also face many challenges that to a large extent mirror the complexity of the socio-technical environments that labs inhabit (Smithies and Ciula, 2020; Ciula and Smithies, forthcoming). There is a high volume of abandoned and discarded projects (Antonijevic, 2015, 148) and a degree of obsolescence both in terms of their outputs and for their existence as a whole. Much of this has to do with how sustainability approaches are defined (Smithies et al., 2019) and how expectations for the future are formed and managed. There are also a multiplicity of matters relating to the physical space they occupy and technology they host, alongside various intellectual matters concerning their role and identity in knowledge creation. For example, conventional academic systems and established norms have repeatedly failed to adapt to the newer roles that emerge alongside labs, such as Research Technology Professionals and Alt-Acs, who perform crucial work in often precarious roles with poor recognition (Ciula, 2022; Papadopoulos and Reilly, 2020; Pawlicka-Deger, 2022).
Despite these issues, structural and good practice guidance for labs is rather limited, and this stands to reason given the diverse variety of ambitions, settings, and contexts in which they operate. However, with substantial investment in digital infrastructure, the rapid pace of technological change and a shifting scholarly landscape, including reforms in research assessment and the recognition of atypical outputs, comes a strong need for exchange and collective learning between labs.
Background
Labs are becoming increasingly embedded in digital scholarship in the humanities. According to El Khatib et al. (2020) a lab is “a hub for digital scholarship that facilitates and provides both physical and virtual space for collaboration, access to tools and resources, and services for researchers broadly defined, including students, faculty, and staff from across campus and citizen scholars from the local community.”
As with many elements of digital scholarship there are different applications of the associated infrastructure and labels used to describe them, such as labs or centres. There are also more epistemic questions as to whether digital labs act as producers of research subjects or containers for them (Malazita et al, 2020). El Khatib et al. (2020) divide digital scholarship centres into two categories “commons-type”, which are service driven, and “lab- or makerspace-type”,which are research-driven and faculty-directed (El Khatib et al., 2020, 12). Pawlicka-Deger (2020) created a typology: “the center-type lab, the techno-science lab, the work station-type lab, the social challenges-centric lab, and virtual lab”, arguing that there has been a shift from laboratories as physical places towards more conceptual ones.
Regardless of the terms we use for such infrastructure, and their exact orientation, there is a certain amount of common ground on the positioning of digital labs within the research workflow, while emphasising their vibrant and innovative nature as well as differences based on local contexts (El Khatib, 2020, 13). Alongside the enthusiasm in the uptake of digital approaches to humanities scholarship, such infrastructures also face many challenges that to a large extent mirror the complexity of the socio-technical environments that labs inhabit (Smithies and Ciula, 2020; Ciula and Smithies, forthcoming). There is a high volume of abandoned and discarded projects (Antonijevic, 2015, 148) and a degree of obsolescence both in terms of their outputs and for their existence as a whole. Much of this has to do with how sustainability approaches are defined (Smithies et al., 2019) and how expectations for the future are formed and managed. There are also a multiplicity of matters relating to the physical space they occupy and technology they host, alongside various intellectual matters concerning their role and identity in knowledge creation. For example, conventional academic systems and established norms have repeatedly failed to adapt to the newer roles that emerge alongside labs, such as Research Technology Professionals and Alt-Acs, who perform crucial work in often precarious roles with poor recognition (Ciula, 2022; Papadopoulos and Reilly, 2020; Pawlicka-Deger, 2022).
Despite these issues, structural and good practice guidance for labs is rather limited, and this stands to reason given the diverse variety of ambitions, settings, and contexts in which they operate. However, with substantial investment in digital infrastructure, the rapid pace of technological change and a shifting scholarly landscape, including reforms in research assessment and the recognition of atypical outputs, comes a strong need for exchange and collective learning between labs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
| Event | Digital Humanities Conference 2023 - Graz, Austria Duration: 10 Jul 2023 → 14 Jul 2023 https://dh2023.adho.org/ |
Conference
| Conference | Digital Humanities Conference 2023 |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | DH2023 |
| Country/Territory | Austria |
| City | Graz |
| Period | 10/07/23 → 14/07/23 |
| Internet address |