e-Science in the Arts and Humanities

This Theme aims to explore the new challenges for research in the Arts and Humanities, and to define the new research agenda that is made possible by e-Science technology. It will encourage innovation and the pushing back of intellectual boundaries, while seeking to be accessible to and inclusive of those researchers who are not currently engaged in this agenda. The Theme will consider the international context of UK research, and will identify the strategic considerations for researchers, students and funding agencies as this agenda is taken forward.

The arts and humanities have substantial commonalities with e-Science, including the use of highly dispersed content such as large scale images, moving images and sound joined up through the grid; the semantic grid and ontologies; deep data and text mining, including image and sound; folksonomies and annotation; collation, visualisation, and simulation. The Arts and Humanities and scientific communities have much to learn from each other, and we wish to encourage participants in this Theme to consider not just what e-science can do for the Arts and Humanities, but what the Arts and Humanities can do for e-Science.

We will run a series of lectures, workshops and training activities that will present several examples of the advanced grid-based research that is being carried out by, for example, historians, linguists, performers, classicists, art historians and archaeologists. Through these case studies, we will show how e-Infrastructure can support innovative research in the arts and humanities, expanding its use beyond the early adopters. We will also develop a training and outreach programme in several key aspects of e-Science, specifically aimed at Arts and Humanities researchers.

Theme events:

• eSI Public Lecture: "A Potential for All - e-Science for the Arts and Humanities" by David Robey and Sheila Anderson
• AHRC ICT Methods Network Workshop on Space and Time: Methods of Geospatial Computing for Mapping the Past
• Ontologies and Semantic Interoperability for Humanities Data
• Collaborative Text Editing
• Methods and Technologies for Enabling Virtual Research Communities
• Grid Enabling Humanities Datasets
• e-Science and Performance
• Aspects of Space and Time in Humanities e-Science
• e-Infrastructures in the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences: Grid-enabling Data Sets
• Arts and Humanities e-Science Projects Meeting
• Living texts: interdisciplinary approaches and methodological commonalities in biology and textual analysis
• Building Communities in the Digital Arts and Humanities: Research Practice and Research Infrastructures
• Enhancing and Exploring Epigraphic and Archaeological Data through e-Science
• e-Science for Musicology
• Developing Shared Resources for Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities
• Developers and Architects Meeting for Arts and Humanities Research Infrastructures
• Mapping Information with and without Geography: Approaches to Data Visualization and Structure in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Object, Artifact and Script