German Version below.<\/p>\n
This is the second time that we are devoting this lecture to the topic of job perspectives and career opportunities in the Digital Humanities. We feel that this is timely because despite the fact that the number of DH courses of higher education, professorships and departments has risen steeply and despite the fact that digitality and research data are very topical in the research community as well as in society at large, many pupils, teachers and students are finding it difficult to identify prospective jobs and potential employers in this domain. What is more, the Digital Humanities are not associated with any of the core subjects taught in schools. In order to help narrow the gap between the university and the vocational sphere, this lecture which is aimed at students of \u2018Digital Philology\u2019 and \u2018Literary and Linguistic Computing\u2019, but is also open for the rest of the university, seeks to provide an overview of the Digital Humanities and what they have to offer. In order to widen the perspective, we are also inviting colleagues from different areas – libraries, archives, publishing houses, companies and research institutions etc. – to contribute their perspective on job opportunities in the field.<\/p>\n
The topic of the lecture is digitality as future<\/em><\/strong> and aims to show career paths in the Digital Humanities. Digitality is a central topic in politics and society; the Corona crisis has highlighted this topic even more and likely helped speed up many developments.<\/p>\n Digitality has led to an unprecedented connectedness of information and democratization of knowledge. News are globally available in real-time, groups are organising via social media in pursuit of joint aims, to fight for rights and to generate knowledge. The world is growing more closely together through knowledge about one another and of one another, but we are also seeing an increase of phenomena such as hate speech and open calls for violence. We are currently seeing the impact of the rise of the digital all too well: digital infrastructures are keeping large parts of our everyday work and communication needs afloat, supply us with life-saving and sustaining information and statistical models on the disease that threatens us all, but are also used to spread misinformation, shifts in the political climate and defamation. The possibilities arising from the generation and networking of knowledge sources come with great chances, but also with great responsibilities as well as the need for a comprehensive critical digital education and the development of keen analytical skills. Increasingly, information about the individual is captured digitally through different instances and leads to a faster, more efficient access to information in areas such as science and education, politics, leisure and health. But the digital storage, interconnection and processing of data requires additional skills beyond domain-specific and technological skills. Rights must be respected and safeguarded both in terms of the commercial and the personal need for the protection of the rights of a society and its members; analysis and interpretation of data must be carried out thoroughly, critically and competently. Dealing with digital data requires active critical engagement with questions of privacy, data ownership and the plausibility and relevance of big data analyses. The great promise of big data<\/em> and data analytics<\/em> must be accompanied by a critical interpretation and reflection and a resulting careful engagement with digital data and technologies in the spirit of a responsible society.<\/p>\n These developments require skills and knowledge of digital data stores and their different forms of organisation that are up to now not anchored systematically in our education system, yet they are impacting many different social and vocational domains. The digital humanities especially have a great responsibility here. While it has always been the responsibility of the humanities to research and reflect new cultural and technological developments and the social changes, structures and artefacts arising from them, this is not any different for the digital humanities. Graduates of the new DH courses of studies of the past 10 to 15 years have mastered the principles of the investigation and interpretation of texts, images, media and communication processes from a humanities perspective, but do likewise have at their disposal the competences necessary for the analysis and interpretation of texts and discourses as data. Their philological and technological competences make them ideal mediators and communicators between society and technology who are highly functional in very diverse domains of life and work. The result are highly relevant career skills and opportunities for graduates with digital skills and competences on the border between society and technology, between products of human communication and the affordances of digitality.<\/p>\n The lecture provides an overview of topics, methods and research projects in the digital humanities, especially digital philology, and strives to shed light on the relationship between those competencies and existing as well we newly evolving professional areas in diverse domains such as university, school, industry, libraries and other cultural institutions.<\/p>\n The initial plan for this lecture was to invite experts from different vocational contexts in the digital humanities to report from their practical experience and to engage in conversations with our students. However, as it will not be prudent or, indeed, possible to invite guests in this semester, we would like to give colleagues a voice in the form of short interviews (written, as podcasts or videos). As a welcome side-effect this would enable us to build up a \u201clibrary of DH jobs perspectives\u201d. To this end, we still welcome contributions from colleagues to engage in such an interview. If you would like to contribute, please feel free to contact us.<\/p>\n Best wishes,<\/p>\n Sabine Bartsch <sabine.bartsch[at]tu-darmstadt.de> @SabineBartsch<\/p>\n Andrea Rapp <andrea.rapp[at]tu-darmstadt.de> @RappAndrea<\/p>\n #stayhome #staysafe #staywell<\/p>\n