All posts by jwbaker

James Baker is Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. James is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and holds degrees from the University of Southampton and latterly the University of Kent, where in 2010 he completed his doctoral research on the late-Georgian artist-engraver Isaac Cruikshank. James works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. He is currently working on a history of knowledge organisation in twentieth century Britain. In 2021, I begin a major new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project 'Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage, 1870 – 1950'. Previous externally funded research projects have focused on legacy descriptions of art objects ('Legacies of Catalogue Descriptions and Curatorial Voice: Opportunities for Digital Scholarship', Arts and Humanities Research Council), the preservation of intangible cultural heritage ('Coptic Culture Conservation Collective', British Council, and 'Heritage Repertoires for inclusive and sustainable development', British Academy), the born digital archival record ('Digital Forensics in the Historical Humanities', European Commission), and decolonial futures for museum collections ('Making African Connections: Decolonial Futures for Colonial Collections', Arts and Humanities Research Council). Prior to joining Southampton, James held positions of Senior Lecturer in Digital History and Archives at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab, Digital Curator at the British Library, and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research Digital History seminar, a member of The Programming Historian Editorial Board and a Director of ProgHist Ltd (Company Number 12192946), and an International Advisory Board Member of British Art Studies.
Conferences, DHums

This&THATCamp Sussex Humanities Lab

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Last week I ran a The Humanities and Technology Camp – or THATCamp – at the Sussex Humanities Lab. These open, delegate led meetings are among my favourite bits of academic life: spontantous, creative, democratic, fun, productive, egalitarian. Although everything on the intersections between humanities and technologies goes at such things, our event included a minor hack: we had a theme – Scale – and with it a (wonderful) keynote. And so This&THATCamp Sussex Humanities Lab was born, the ‘This’ furthered by us playing around with the scheduling, creating two-hour slots for ‘proper’ sessions that required time and space and one-hour slots for briefer, more impromptu (usually discussion) offerings. And it worked really well, encouraging us to be concise where concision was required and providing room for more in depth work where that was needed.

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One of the things I stressed to attendees was that I wanted us to do and make things rather than talk about doing and making things. This has nothing to do with hack vs yack, but rather a desire to capture the ideas, expertise, and energy in the room, particularly as we were such as diverse group with undergraduates and professors, humanists and social scientists, academics and non-academics all represented.

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Much of what we made is currently lingering on our Slack channel, but there are a few treats available right now:

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As ever, I had a blast. I worked with old friends and made new ones. I thought through complex problems that dog the work that we digital humanities do (I may, for example, never use the phrase “distant reading” again). And I learnt so much: that there are people out there fighting to keep all births, marriages, and death data from Ancestry, that there are tools out there that can – with a little effort – turn my R code into interactive visualisations, and that undergraduates and Digital Humanities do mix.

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Without the generosity, open-mindedness, and willingness to fail of those who attended – not least my colleagues at the Sussex Humanities Lab who put so much effort into running the event – none of this would have happened. So bravo folks. Awesome job.

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