CFP: “The times they are a-changin’” in Digital Humanities

Im Rahmen der internationalen DH2025-Konferenz „Accessibility & Citizenship“ lädt das Department Digital Humanities and Social Studies der FAU Erlangen zu einer Minikonferenz am 15. Juli 2025 ein.

Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil des offiziellen Rahmenprogramms und bietet eine spannende Gelegenheit zum Austausch über methodologische und konzeptionelle Herausforderungen von Zeitreihendaten in den Digital Humanities. Die Minikonferenz findet auf Englisch statt.

Mehr Infos: https://www.dhss.phil.fau.de/call-for-papers-miniconference-on-the-temporal-dimension-of-data/

Digital Humanities (DH) methods have advanced significantly in recent decades. However, several blind spots still persist across the field, the insufficient attention to temporal dynamics in data being one of them.

Temporal change plays an integral role in a number of disciplines within DH, affecting data, methodology, analyses, and the field itself (Glawion et al. 2025). Digital art history, especially provenance research, is challenged by changing or missing object information, such as varying titles (Kim 2015) or attributions (Hofbauer 2021), complicating access and tracing their (ownership) history over time and space. In geographical studies on mobility, this movement in space and time is mediated by practices of sense-making changing slowly over time (Creswell 2010). Discourse analysis examines time frames around key public events that set specific communicative strategies in motion (Islentyeva 2022), corpus-based studies employ quantitative linguistic analyses to generate meaningful time periods for studying linguistic change (e.g., Gries & Hilpert 2008), and studies of register, text varieties associated with the situation of use (Biber & Conrad, 2019), are beginning to examine emergence and evolution of registers as cultural constructs (Gracheva et al., forthcoming). Digital Literary Studies raise questions about cultural evolution (Sobchuk 2023), genre history (Wagner-Egelhaaf 2014) and editorial histories of literary works (Bottigheimer 1987) on the level of texts, the evolution of authorial style over the course of an author’s life (Piper 2018) and different types of time-series data such as eye movements and EEG data in empirical studies of reader-response (Dimigen et al. 2011; Weitin et al. 2024).

We particularly invite proposals that relate to the theme of temporal change, including but not limited to the following questions: How should we address temporal change methodologically in DH? What role should visualizations play? Are time periods implemented to categorize data from the start (top-down), or are they the result of data-driven classification (bottom-up)? And how can we ensure that project data remains FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) across disciplines long after the project concludes?

Target audience:

The mini-conference welcomes researchers from all career stages from diverse disciplines and backgrounds who are engaged with the temporal dimensions of data. We encourage submissions from those involved in DH, data analysis, historical studies, linguistic and literary research, art history, geo-spatial studies and related fields.

Submission types:

The mini-conference invites submissions of finalized projects or work-in-progress reports on theoretical or methodological reflections, empirical studies, and/or practical applications on the topic of time in DH (15 min. + 15 min. discussions). Submissions can focus on but are not limited to the domains of “images & objects”, “text & language” and “place & space”.

Submission format and deadline:

Submissions should include a presentation title, the presenter’s affiliation, and an abstract of max. 250 words (bibliography excluded). Please submit the information as a PDF to anastasia.glawion@fau.de. The submission deadline is April 10, 2025; acceptance notifications will be sent out by April 30, 2025. The conference will be held in English.

For questions, contact anastasia.glawion@fau.de.