Classes

The programme for DH Downunder 2021 includes the following primarily asychronous courses, with in-person sessions for some as noted:

The DH Downunder event is entirely virtual this year. Most classes consist primarily of asynchronous material (tutorials, worksheets, interactive online materials, some video) that you can work through at your own pace. Links to these will be released at the start of the event.

The programme also includes some special events, such as the Canadian-Australian Partnership for Open Scholarship (CAPOS) annual Australian gathering on 9-10 December, with lightning talks (open to all) and a partnership meeting (for members, by invitation). We will also be holding a social event on Tuesday evening from 5pm AEDT (Sydney time). Zoom meeting details are being provided to registered attendees via email.

We are always open to new ideas for classes to run for future years, so if you are interested, just get in touch.

Class descriptions

Gale Digital Scholar Lab

Nick Schapowal (Gale Research Consultant)

Gale Digital Scholar Lab creates new possibilities by offering solutions to the most common challenges facing researchers in the digital humanities today. Emerging from the field of humanities computing with its origins in the late 1940s, digital humanities (DH) is, in many ways, still a growing discipline. With that growth comes a mix of exciting opportunities for researchers and libraries, as well as a host of challenges still to overcome.
When performing analyses, finding, cleaning, and organising data, natural language processing (NLP) for historical texts is often a daunting task, especially when looking to generate meaningful results. Gale Digital Scholar Lab removes these barriers and streamlines the workflow process, allowing researchers to spend more time identifying previously undiscovered data, testing theories, analysing results, and gaining new insights. 
We are running a Gale Digital Scholar Lab workshop featuring the latest Gale Lab enhancements as part of the DH Downunder 2021 – Summer School Program. We hope you can join us for the workshop & experience the Gale Digital Scholar Lab in action on Tuesday 7th December 2021 from 2:00pm – 3:00pm AEDT.

Prerequisites: just interest!

Approximate time commitment needed: 1 hour

Supporting Positive Collaboration in DH Teamwork

Lynne Siemens, Ray Siemens (University of Victoria, Canada)

This offering explores core, pragmatic issues related to collaborative teamwork in the digital humanities. Following a brief example-based discussion of DH teamwork, topics covered include: being a team, and being collaboration-ready; a look at types of teams and the ways they work; an outline of supportive policies and best practices; and beyond.

Prerequisites: Just interest!

Approximate time commitment needed: 3 hours

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Authorship Detection Using Stylometry

Hugh Craig and Naomi Fraser (University of Newcastle, Australia)

This introductory course will take participants through a workflow from sample text files (supplied) to authorship attribution findings. Participants will be provided with a text set of Shakespeare-era plays and instructed in using the online word-counting utility Intelligent Archive and the online R-based stylometry platform Stylo.

For simplicity we will confine ourselves to plays as samples and to word counts as features. The principles explored, however, should apply to all kinds of language samples and to other possible features such as character and word n-grams.

We will present the material in six packages, one with instructions on downloads, user registration, and uploads, and the rest with instructions for carrying out procedures. Each should take less than an hour.

Prerequisites: none

Approximate time commitment: 6 hours

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R for Data Wrangling and Visualisation

Siva Kalyan (Australian National University)

Learn to organise tabular data, do text searches, and create plots and maps using R.

Prerequisites: none

Approximate time commitment: 12 hours

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Digital Mapping for Humanities

Bill Pascoe (University of Newcastle, Australia)

Learn how to create digital maps and spatiotemporal data for Humanities. With no prior experience required, this course will cover some fundamentals of mapping theory and techniques, and provide step by step, worked examples that can be adapted to your projects. ‘Mapping’ in humanities isn’t just putting points on map so a wide range of other possibilities for humanities will be considered, various visualisations to metrical analysis. Recent tools and innovations from the TLCMap platform (http://tlcmap.org) specifically intended for humanities researchers’ needs will also be introduced.

Prerequisites: familiarity with using a computer

Approximate time commitment: half a day to a day, depending on how much you want to do

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An Open Knowledge Toolkit

Caroline Winter, Alyssa Arbuckle, Luis Meneses, Randa El Khatib, and Ray Siemens (University of Victoria, Canada)

This offering provides a focused and practically-oriented introduction of key open scholarship concepts, approaches to tools and data, and open knowledge in situ. It consists of online training materials associated with the Open Knowledge Practicum at the University of Victoria, Canada — themselves encapsulation of longer courses offered in conjunction with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (dhsi.org).

Prerequisites: Just curiosity!

Approximate time commitment: 3 hours

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Podcasting: Communicating Your Research, Engaging Listeners and Making an Impact

The BLab Coats (Alexander Wray, Hamid Sediqi, Marina Khan) & Roger Dawkins

Learn how to storyboard a podcast!

Podcasts are exploding in popularity, with a 70% audience growth in Australia in the last few years. There are so many fascinating podcasts – about science, true crime, sport, finance, fashion and more. They’ve become a vital way for writers to get their ideas out there, to a huge audience.

Narrative nonfiction is one of the most popular genres of podcasts, where writers use techniques from fiction to engage listeners and maintain their interest. You’ve probably heard of these examples: Science Vs, This American Life, The Teacher’s Pet and RadioLab.

In this class we’ll set you up with an easy method for crafting your research ideas into an effective narrative non-fiction podcast. You’ll gain insights into how to make your research an immersive long-form audio storytelling experience.

We’ll guide you through a blow-by-blow analysis of a classic podcast, and you’ll be inspired to develop a storyboard for your very own podcast. Learn about podcasting technique and how to affect a broader audience by sensitising yourself to the affective element of your work.

No technical expertise is required. This class is developed in collaboration with expert podcasters The BLab Coats, see www.blabcoats.com. Enrol now.

Prerequisites: none

Approximate time commitment: 3 hours

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Introduction to Network Analysis

Rachel Hendery (Western Sydney University)

Visualising and analysing networks is important for all kinds of applications in historical, literary, linguistic, social, and cultural research, but also beyond the humanities. Working through these materials you will learn about some key concepts from network theory, and have a go at using common tools to prepare data for visualisation as a network, display it, and do simple analyses.

We will use Gephi, a free, open-source program that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Please install it on your computer.

Prerequisites: need access to a computer to be able to install the required software (Gephi). Basic familiarity with spreadsheets (nothing complicated, just opening and saving files, editing and adding simple data).

Approximate time commitment: at least 4 hours to work through the basics. 8-12 hours if you want to create your own project or try the more complicated tasks.

Zoom: Q&A session where you can get help with your own project, Friday 4-6pm

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