Digital Humanities and Translingual Communities
The Digital Humanities subproject within the strand focuses on technology-driven forms of communication and representation, concentrating on social and other digital media generated by language communities in the UK. This involves a series of projects working with key partners and collaborating institutions such as the British Library and the Royal Opera House, with the aim of developing pioneering research questions and methodologies for working with digital media.
Community engagement is a primary focus, exploring both how language communities in the UK make use of digital technologies to promote themselves and their concerns across languages and cultures, as well as how this translingual reality can be more effectively represented within the UK’s digital archives and collections. More widely, the project demonstrates how a linguistically sensitive approach to Digital Humanities research can be articulated.
Current initiatives and projects led by members of the team include (see links for further details):
- Latin Americans in London and the UK: Francielle Carpenedo and Naomi Wells are engaged in research focusing on the digital presence of Latin American communities and groups in the UK.
- Social Media and the Royal Opera House: Jane Winters, Naomi Wells and Marty Steer are engaged in research exploring multilingual social media responses to the Royal Opera House’s live cinema screenings.
- The ‘Digital Diasporas: Interdisciplinary Perspectives‘ conference: The team are organising a forthcoming conference exploring the relationship between digital technologies and diasporic communities, with particular attention to linguistic and cultural diversity.
- The Digital Modern Languages seminar series: Naomi Wells is co-convening a new seminar series with Paul Spence (King’s College London, Language Acts and Worldmaking project) which brings together research and teaching in Modern Languages which engages with digital culture, media and technologies. This series is a collaboration across the AHRC Open World Research Initiative.
Research team
Jane Winters (Chair in Digital Humanities, School of Advanced Study, University of London)
Naomi Wells (Postdoctoral Research Associate, IMLR, School of Advanced Study, University of London)
Francielle Carpenedo (Doctoral Researcher, IMLR, School of Advanced Study, University of London)
Marty Steer (Digital Humanities Technical Lead, School of Advanced Study)