136033 SE Research Seminar Digital Humanities - Linked Data and Big Data in Digital Cultural Heritage (2023W)

The digitisation of cultural heritage and historical data has created previously unimagined possibilities for humanities researchers. We now have instant, online access to databases harvested from museum collections, archives and libraries, and researchers can access and use data and materials stored in any location, at any time, from anywhere in the world. At the heart of this innovation are the principles of big data and linked open data - both inherited from the natural and social sciences - which are being reimagined for use in cultural heritage contexts by historians, classicists, museologists, art historians, literary scholars and librarians.

But heritage data is, by its nature, complex, and requires thoughtful interrogation by those who produce it, and those who make use of it. It is not neutral, and often bears traces of the historical context in which objects were collected and data was created.

In this seminar, we will approach these complexities and consider them in the light of current debates taking place in the broader Digital Humanities. Topics we will cover include:

Artificial Intelligence & Algorithmic Justice
• Heritage Data in AI models
Museum & Archival Data and Their Uses
• Using Wikidata to trace looted art
• Digital and non-digital restitution of colonial era materials
• Archival re-evaluation
• Digital objects and their biographies
Ethical Use of Heritage Data
• Digitising and accessing sensitive historical materials
• Ethical use of linked data repositories
• Difficult materials and digital media
• Ethical use of linked data repositories
Privacy, Copyright and Ownership of Data
• User-generated content in heritage contexts

Practical sessions, teaching basic digital research skills using heritage data, such as data mining, cleaning, geo-referencing and visualisation may also be included in the syllabus if there is sufficient interest.