Data Bites - File Naming Best Practices for Research Data
2025-05-12 00:00 - 23:59 (America/Halifax) | Ontario
Date: May 12 2025

This practical workshop, delivered by the delivered by the UBC Library Research Data Management team, introduces strategies for consistent and meaningful file naming to support better research organization, collaboration, and long-term data reuse. Designed for graduate students, researchers, and staff, this session helps participants avoid common pitfalls and adopt best practices in their research workflows.

Participants will learn how to:

Avoid problematic file names that can cause compatibility issues across platforms and systems

Apply clear and consistent file naming conventions

Incorporate elements like version control, dates, and identifiers for easy file tracking and retrieval

Presenter(s):Eugene Barsky, Vanessa Choy

Visualizing Data in the Humanities: From Concepts to Creation
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-15 23:59 | University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Dates: May 12th to May 15th, 2025

Instructors: Diana Duarte Salinas

Description: Data visualization is a powerful tool for uncovering patterns, telling compelling stories, and communicating complex ideas in ways that transcend traditional text-based formats. This workshop is designed for humanities scholars and professionals interested in exploring how data visualization can enrich their research, teaching, and public engagement efforts.

Over the course, participants will learn foundational principles of data visualization, explore a range of tools suited for humanities projects, and engage in hands-on exercises that emphasize practical application. Whether you are new to data visualization or seeking to refine your skills, this workshop will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to create meaningful and visually impactful representations of your data.

Intended Audience:

This workshop is open to humanities scholars, educators, librarians, and students interested in integrating data visualization into their work. No prior experience with data visualization is required.

Digital Misogynoir and Harm Reduction Tactics
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-15 23:59 | University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Dates: May 12th to May 15th, 2025

Instructor: Dr. KáLyn Coghill

Description:

This course engages in a critical examination of the distinctive challenges encountered by Black women within the digital sphere, attributed to the convergence of misogyny and anti-Black racism, collectively referred to as misogynoir. Participants will investigate the historical context, manifestations, and repercussions of misogynoir in online settings. Through comprehensive case studies, interactive discussions, and contemporary examples, students will attain a nuanced understanding of the experiences of Black women in digital spaces, as well as how online platforms can serve to both perpetuate and contest misogynoir. This i aims to cultivate awareness, encourage critical thinking, and stimulate discourse regarding equity and inclusion in the digital era.

Additionally, the course scrutinizes the development and impact of digital activism, concentrating on the manner in which social media platforms empower grassroots movements that advocate for gender, sexuality, and racial equality. Students will evaluate how online platforms challenge oppressive systems, amplify marginalized voices, and foster community involvement. By analyzing cases such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and #SayHerName, the course delves into the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality within the context of online advocacy. Furthermore, it assesses the efficacy and limitations of hashtag activism in effecting social change. Students will explore concepts such as digital Black feminism, intersectionality, and media literacy while refining their critical thinking and ethical engagement capabilities.

Intended Audience:

Digital humanities scholars, digital librarians, social scientists, activists, organizers and people interested in trust and safety online and digital resistance.

Intro to Minimal Web Design with Jekyll
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-15 23:59 | University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Instructors: Chelsea Miya and Ryan Chartier

Description:

In this workshop, you will learn how to build lightweight static websites using the Jekyll static site generator. We will walk through the theory and practice of minimal computing, a “needs based” back to basics approach to web design using free, open-source tools (Risam and Gil 2022, Sayers 2016).

In recent years, there has been growing interest within the digital humanities in exploring sustainable ways to publish and share research online. In comparison to Content Management System – platforms for creating and editing websites such as WordPress and Drupal – static websites are more secure, require little to no maintenance, and far less computing power to sustain. While platforms make it notoriously difficult for users to export their data, static sites are also easy to archive and store offline. For these reasons, static site generators can be a more sustainable and low-cost alternative.

In this workshop, we will cover:

Minimal computing as critical praxis

Installing Jekyll

Using Collections Builder, a Jekyll-based add-on, to create a digital collection; as well as best practices for archival metadata.

Customizing the layout and design using CSS stylesheets

Creating and editing content with Markdown

Experimenting with more sophisticated layouts using Liquid templates

Deploying the site to GitHub Pages

Other options for static site generators, such as Pelican and Astro, and how to choose between them

Over the course of the workshop, participants will work on creating a digital collections website, or another website of choice such as a: research exhibit, event page, online cv, personal blog, online journal or zine, or wiki. At the end of the week, you will have the chance to share your projects with the group and get feedback.

Experience with HTML, CSS, and the basics of using the command line is recommended but not required.

Intended Audience:

Researchers, students, and staff who are interested in building websites.

No prior web development experience is necessary, but some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is helpful.

An intensive introduction to the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-15 23:59 | University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Dates: May 12th to May 15th, 2025

Instructor: James Cummings and Diane Jakacki

This workshop is an intensive introduction taught in a way that both those who are absolute beginners to digital markup and the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) or also those with a little bit of experience (but needing a refresher) will be able to complete it. No previous experience with XML or TEI markup is assumed, and introductions to both of these will be provided as part of the workshop. The TEI Guidelines are the de facto standard for recording our interpretation of historical texts for research through digital markup. Although the very general TEI Guidelines are used for many purposes, this workshop will be customised to the interests of the participants attending through a pre-workshop questionnaire, but starts with the assumption that you are likely interested in creating digital editions of historical texts. This workshop will explain the XML (Extensible Markup Language) format and the vocabulary of the TEI through both lectures and practical hands-on exercises completed by participants. The workshop will provide a basic level of introduction to those modules of the TEI which are most popular and useful to participants. It will also train participants to be able to customise the TEI framework for their own projects. Participants do not need to provide their own materials as the exercises will use pre-prepared texts, however you will be encouraged to consider how you might apply what you have learned to your own materials. Participants will be sent instructions to install the Oxygen XML Editor (with a free trial licence) on their own laptops, though other software options (such as LEAF-Writer) will be briefly demonstrated as part of the workshop.

Description:

Intended Audience:

Beginners, but those with some very limited TEI experience who want a refresher could also benefit.

Approaching Media Archaeology from a Digital Humanities Perspective: Introduction, Tools, and Techniques
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-15 23:59 | University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Dates: May 12th to May 15th, 2025

Instructors: Arun Jacob and Paula Sanchez Nuñez de Villavicencio

Description: This workshop enables participants to examine the ways in which media archeology works as an effective research methodology for Digital Humanities (DH) scholarship, as its simultaneous focus on larger media infrastructures, such as globalized corporate entities networking with nation-states, alongside the detailed histories and bureaucratic materials generated by specific media technologies and their data structures, make visible and legible the production and circulation of power within contemporary networks of media technologies. Extending from DH scholars such as Alan Liu (2012; 2013) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2013), this course examines how media archeology is crucial to reckoning with the historical and ongoing targeting of marginalized and vulnerable individuals and populations, in particular those who are racialized and gendered, and sourcing what Ezikiel Dixon-Roman calls “hauntings” (2017) of technical progress, funding, data practices and other historical trajectories within contemporary media technologies.

As outlined by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, media archaeology is cross-disciplinary and nomadic, and its nimbleness and tolerance for multi-pronged analysis allow for a greater understanding of digital media’s “interactivity, navigability, and digital representation and transmission” (3; 2012). This flexibility and simultaneous attention to the invisible and visible, material and immaterial, make it well suited to understanding the particular data-driven algorithmic processes that define contemporary digital media and DH scholarship. The genealogies of power revealed through media archeologies, resulting from rival technologies vying for control, trace how the hegemon came to be, and ascend to the pole position of the socio-technical apparatus (Monea and Packer 2016). Media archeologies understood thus enables DH scholars to engage in inter-/cross-disciplinary conversations with scholars in science and technology studies, philosophy of science, DH and other disciplines.

Intended Audience:

This course is intended for a wide audience interested in learning about media archeology as a digital humanities method to approach questions of knowledge and power. We welcome undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty to explore techniques of analyses that integrate digital humanities tools with historical research.

Making: A Feminist Praxis
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-15 23:59 | University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Dates: May 12th to May 15th, 2025

Instructors: Kim Martin and Kiera Obbard

Description:

This course will introduce participants to a feminist praxis of making through a combination of theory and praxis. Over four days, participants will read and discuss a variety of texts related to feminist making, across topic areas including weaving, poetry film, zine making, and cross-stitching, and then apply these learnings with hands-on maker activities. In each activity, the digital will be represented in either the mode of creation (i.e., via a digital platform), or in the final output. Through this approach, participants will learn to apply creative analytic practices to their engagement with feminism, data, and the digital. This course will also discuss how these approaches can be implemented into pedagogy. At the end of the workshop, participants will have a collection of artistic objects (some digital, some material) and, to draw on Ahmed’s feminist toolkit, a new feminist maker toolkit of both theory and praxis for using creative outputs for speaking on feminist issues, raising dissent, and surviving together in challenging times.

Intended Audience:

The intended audience are creative practitioners, faculty, students, or anyone wanting to learn to implement their creative practice into research and pedagogy. Participants of any skill level can attend the workshop.

Data Management for Reproducible Research (RDM Jumpstart)
2025-05-12 00:00 - 2025-05-16 23:59 | Ontario
Dates: May 12-16, 2025

This week-long workshop will introduce attendees to best practices in Research Data Management (RDM) using common tools to support research transparency and reproducibility. Robust implementation of RDM principles enables researchers to address bias and reproducibility, effectively share their research, and ensure long term access to their research inputs and outputs. From research question development to findings dissemination, RDM underpins a fruitful and successful academic career.

Sessions will address the importance and underlying principles of RDM; we’ll explore issues related to RDM and the growing landscape of RDM-related requirements stemming from funders and publishers. Using the R programming language, the Open Science Framework (OSF), and Borealis (Dataverse), we’ll explore solutions to address these issues and enable compliance with funder and publisher requirements.

All attendees will work with a common dataset to explore how to ask questions of data using common computational tools. Throughout, attendees will be introduced to: the documentation and metadata requirements to ensure accessibility: considerations to address different aspects of reproducibility; practices to maintain their data’s integrity; and ways to ensure their final data deposit is adherent to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.

Draft program and schedule

Subject to change.

Day 1

What is Research Data Management

Principles of RDM and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable)

Integrating RDM in the research data lifecycle

DMPs (Data Management Plans)

Setting up a project in OSF

Day 2

Licensing concerns as they relate to data

Introduction to R and RStudio

Day 3

File organization, naming, and version control

Data types in R

Proprietary and non-proprietary data storage formats

Preparing data for analysis: recoding, creating new variables, and filters

Day 4

Best practices for code management

Data visualization using R

Structured practice time and Q&A

Day 5

Preparing data, code, documentation, and other materials for deposit

Depositing data to Borealis

Guest speakers and wrap-up

Link to slides

Who is creating and delivering this workshop?

In alphabetic order…

Erin McCoy, Research Assistant, Carleton University

Gia-Huy Hoang, Research Assistant, University of Calgary

Jane Fry, Data Services Librarian, Carleton University

Jennifer Abel, Research Data Management Librarian, University of Calgary

Maria Amoros, Research Assistant, University of Victoria

Mathew Vis-Dunbar, Data Librarian, UBCO

Nick Rochlin, Data Science Librarian, University of Victoria

Introduction to StoryMaps with ArcGIS Online
2025-05-13 00:00 - 23:59 | Ontario
Date: May 13 2025

This workshop is a gentle introduction to creating StoryMaps using the ArcGIS Online platform designed for those new to mapping projects. StoryMaps offer a low-barrier way to visualize spatial narratives that can be shared with your friends, community, or stakeholders. The StoryMaps interface is quite intuitive, with drag and drop options that result in an aesthetic output. No prior experience necessary. This workshop makes use of the free account option, though you are welcome to work within a personal or organizational account if you have a paid subscription.

By the end of this workshop, you will:

Know the differences between Public vs. Enterprise accounts for ArcGIS Online products, as well as be aware of the limitations of working with a free account

Gain basic familiarity with ArcGIS StoryMaps by exploring the interface and creating a StoryMap of your own

Learn how to add text, images, video, maps, and immersive content to a StoryMap

Understand the workflow of creating a web map with ArcGIS Online and embedding it in a StoryMap

Identify resources for future mapping projects

Things to do before arriving:

Prior to the workshop, please create a free ArcGIS Online public account. If you have a paid account with Esri, you can choose to use your regular sign-in or create a separate free account to follow along.

While we will be providing workshop data that you are welcome to use, you are encouraged to prepare at least 4 images from your daily commute or a walk you recently went on to incorporate into your project.

Presenter(s): Alexandra Alisauskas & Lily Crandall-Oral

Data Deposit Bootcamp
2025-05-20 00:00 - 23:59 | McMaster University, 1280 Main St W, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L8, Canada
Date: 20 May 2025

Data deposit and data sharing are increasingly recognized as best practice to support open research, reproducibility, research integrity, collaboration, and more. Disciplines, funders, and journals are increasingly requiring researchers to share or deposit data. But how do you get your dataset ready for sharing? What’s the best repository to share it in? If you have a dataset that’s ready for deposit or that you’d like to get deposit ready, join RDM Services for this workshop.

By the end of this 3-hour session, you will be able to:

• Identify a target data repository

• Organize and create documentation for your dataset,

• Define your metadata, and

• (Potentially) begin the deposit process.

If you have a dataset ready to submit, bring it along! No dataset, no problems–we have a sample dataset you can use to go through the process and learn how to deposit data.

With light snacks and refreshments to sustain you and specialists on-hand to answer any questions, you’ll end this session with ready-to-submit data…or submitted or even published data! Graduate Students who have finished their thesis work are encouraged to attend!

Learning Outcomes: Outline documentation and metadata best practices and identify the appropriate repository for their dataset. Develop a README file that thoroughly describes the dataset being deposited. Organize datasets in preperation for data deposit, including metadata entry.

Details: This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio:

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Archives in Action
2025-05-26 00:00 - 23:59 | Dalhousie University
Date: May 26 2025

This workshop brings together Indigenous filmmakers, archives practitioners, and academic researchers for a roundtable discussion on the urgent need to develop national frameworks for the preservation, access, and distribution of audiovisual materials in Mi’kma’ki and across Canada. Film is an important medium for conveying First Nations culture, language, teaching, and history. Yet, audiovisual materials remain among the most vulnerable cultural materials due to a range of systemic challenges—insufficient preservation methods, under-resourced technical infrastructure, limited and unstable funding, and intellectual property regimes that do not support artists or communities. Participants will explore these critical issues and actionable steps to be taken by key stakeholders, including government bodies, cultural institutions, and funding agencies. This conversation aims to shape a “manifesto for action,” setting the groundwork for a national policy agenda that recognizes, protects, and sustains Indigenous audiovisual heritage.

Data Bites - Choosing File Formats for Research Data
2025-05-26 00:00 - 23:59 | Ontario
Date: May 26 2025

Workshop: Choosing File Formats for Research Data

This practical workshop, delivered by the UBC Library Research Data Management team, explores how selecting the right file formats can support long-term preservation, data sharing, and reuse. Aimed at graduate students, researchers, and staff, the session highlights best practices for choosing formats that align with FAIR data principles.

Participants will learn how to:

Apply practical guidelines for selecting file formats throughout the research data lifecycle

Identify preferred file formats for preservation, sharing, and interoperability

Distinguish between proprietary and open formats and understand their implications.

Presenter(s): Eugene Barsky, Vanessa Choy

Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Constance Crompton

For those new to the field, this is an introduction to the theory and practice of encoding electronic texts for the humanities. This workshop is designed for individuals who are contemplating embarking on a text-encoding project, or for those who would like to better understand the philosophy, theory, and practicalities of encoding in XML (Extensible Markup Language) using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. No prior experience with XML is assumed, but the course will move quickly through the basics. During the course we will provide online space for the practical application of project planning and technical knowledge acquired throughout the week.

Intro to Spatial Analysis for the Humanities
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Amanda Madden

This course is intended to be an introduction to the spatial humanities both in practice and theory and is suitable for both novices and those with more experience. The course will consist of readings, lectures, and hands-on practice with basic GIS and other softwares. An emphasis will be placed on spatial humanities as a way of thinking. By the end of the course, students will have a basic toolset to apply the techniques and theory of spatial humanities to both their research and teaching. This course will combine lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities with emphasis on the latter.

Introduction to Digital Approaches in Music Research
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Timothy Duguid

This course introduces current practices in encoding, analysing, and presenting music information. It will begin by introducing the philosophy, theory, and practicalities behind encoding symbolic music notation and will then explore pathways for analyzing and publishing that encoded data. Participants should have a basic knowledge of how to read music, but no prior experience with coding or XML is assumed.

DH for Chairs and Deans [Consultancy]
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Harold Short, John Unsworth, and Ray Siemens

Intended for university administrators who seek an understanding of the Digital Humanities that is both broad and deep, this offering establishes a cohort that [1] meets as a group for three dedicated sessions before the first day of DHSI (on the Sunday beforehand) and several dedicated session midweek to survey and discuss pragmatic DH basics and chief administrative issues related to supporting DH and those who practice it at their institution, [2] allows those enrolled to audit (as non-participatory observers, able to go from class to class) any and all of the DHSI courses, and [3] individually engages in consultation and targeted discussion with the instructors, who are the first three chairs of the international Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), speakers and consultants contributing to the course, and others in the group outside of course time during the institute.

Introduction to Project Planning and Management for DH: Issues and Approaches
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Lynne Siemens

This course will cover the basics of project management from project definition to project review upon completion. Topics such as budget setting and controls, risk management, critical path scheduling, software tools, and related Internet resources will also be discussed. Material will be covered through lectures, discussions, case studies, and presentations. By the end of the course, participants will be able to implement the course concepts and tools in their projects.

This course has lecture, seminar, and hands-on components.

DH Programming Pedagogy in the Age of AI
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Anastasia Salter and John T. Murray

In this team-taught workshop, we invite scholars to join us in exploring the relationship between generative AI and the future of programming pedagogy in the digital humanities and a frontline of what the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI called “critical AI literacy.” Generative AI offers opportunities to make programming more accessible to diverse learners, and we explore how to use these emerging technologies to build inclusive pathways into programming through natural language interfaces and “literate programming.” This course will emphasize two critical programming languages, JavaScript and Python, that are commonly taught in humanities courses due to their applicability for interactive experiences, public humanities, and textual analysis. This workshop will build participants’ comfort with both generating and debugging code with AI tools, as well as deploying generative AI outside of mainstream commercial projects. Participants will be invited to approach GitHub, Copilot, Hugging Face, TensorFlow, and Jupyter Notebooks through a beginner’s mind, working through, critiquing, and developing assignments and pedagogical applications or their own classrooms. Participants with and without programming experience are welcome.

Equity, Advocacy, and Care Frameworks for DH Labs and Communities
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Jacquelyne Thoni Howard

This course will guide attendees through the process of developing and enhancing student engagement and educational digital humanities programming using equity, advocacy, and care frameworks. Informed by liberatory and feminist pedagogies, this workshop will demonstrate how to build DH programming that meets the diverse educational and research needs of students, faculty, institutions, and community partners. Participants will read and discuss critical studies that explain how experiential and educational digital humanities programming can be used to build equitable and interdisciplinary learning spaces that enhance career readiness and skill-building for students while contributing to the research of faculty and community partners. Participants will actively ideate, collaborate, and construct strategies for designing advocacy-driven digital humanities labs, curriculum modules, and experiential programs that integrate with equity curriculum. They will write program goals, explore funding options, design recruitment plans, learn about project management techniques, find technical support options, and develop program assessments. By the end of the course, attendees leave with can project plan that they can implement at their institutions.

Introduction to Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Susan Brown and Kim Martin

This workshop provides an introduction to the web of data for humanities researchers and cultural data stewards. Linked open data is highly structured interoperable data hosted on the web that is structured with semantic relationships so that machines can become partners in discovering, disseminating, sharing, and analyzing data. Done right, LOD contributes to a semantic web of resources that can be accessed and used across multiple online locations, aggregating knowledge and facilitating its reuse: it is FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data in the most profound sense. The workshop will cover reasons for publishing cultural and research collections as LOD by looking at a range of existing uses in humanities research and GLAM (gallery, library, archive, and museum) contexts.

Participants will gain hands-on experience with several linked open data projects and tools; learn about the resource description framework (RDF), ontologies, and vocabularies used to create linked open data; learn how LOD can be leveraged in queries, visualizations, and web applications; gain an understanding of how LOD is created; and be introduced to a number of practical, ethical, and theoretical considerations that should inform the creation and reuse of diverse, nuanced, responsible, and usable linked open data for cultural research and dissemination. By the end of this workshop, participants should have grasped the major concepts of linked open data and the components of its technology stack; understand the basics of linked data creation, publication, and use; and be positioned to start to develop a linked data project of their own.

Intended audience: Advanced students, subject matter experts and researchers, librarians and data curators from GLAM contexts, research software engineers, and the LOD-curious!

Conceptualizing and Creating a Digital Edition
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Katie Blizzard and Lorena Gauthereau

This course will explore all aspects of conceptualizing, planning for, and creating a digital edition. It provides a basic introduction to the various types of digital editions, the practice of editing in the digital age, and a survey of the many digital tools available to serve project goals. Approaching a digital edition means taking time to think about how end-users will want to work with a particular edition. Beginning with the research and analytical needs of end-users in mind, editors are better able to develop effective editorial strategies that will result in a dynamic, useful, and usable digital edition. In this course, participants will engage in hands-on learning and group discussions related to project conceptualization, editorial policies and processes, and the selection and use of digital tools that can serve the needs of researchers and other end-users. Participants will bring a few sample materials they are working with. We will use these in a class project – creating a digital edition over the course of the week using skills learned in each session. Our goal is for participants to return to their home institutions ready and able to build upon, enhance, and transform these initial ideas into robust digital editions.

Queer(ing) DH
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Jason Boyd and Edmond Chang

Queerness and the digital humanities share a common ethos: a desire to make meaning in new ways. Indeed, the intersection of DH and queerness is a site of rich potential that can inspire (and challenge) us to think differently about DH, its methods, its purpose, and its politics. This is true whether we are building a DH project or writing DH critique.

This course draws from readings, discussions, interactive exercises, visits by guest speakers, and short, collaborative hands-on making projects to explore a variety of questions about queerness and DH. What does DH bring to queer studies? What does queer studies bring to DH? How might a queer DH project serve social justice? How can we develop DH projects that are queer in their design? What might it mean to queer DH itself? How can we understand DH as already queer? This course values self-reflection, intersectional perspectives, and cultural critique. It addresses the challenges and frictions facing those who do queer DH work. What are the obstacles for queer DH within larger structures of academia and funding? Is there a tension between the push for skill-building within DH and queer studies’ critiques of neoliberalism? When do the norms of DH themselves run counter to the values of queerness?

Our readings will address topics that fall under the wide umbrella of the “digital humanities,” including (but not limited to) data visualization, classification systems, programming languages, video games, mapping and geography, online archives, and tangible computing. As instructors, we bring to this course an understanding that LGBT/queer people, identities, and histories are multiple and complex. We strive to foster thinking about queerness and DH that engages meaningfully with intersecting issues of race, class, disability, nationality, religion, and indigenous rights.

Open Assembly: Teaching & Publishing with COVE Studio & Editions
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Kate Oestreich

This course will introduce the open-assembly teaching and making tools at the nonprofit COVE (Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education), which anyone, anywhere can use without having to learn to code. COVE is a scholar-driven, open-access platform that publishes both peer-reviewed material and active-learning or “flipped classroom” student projects built with our web-based online tools. COVE operates as a two-fold platform: Studio, where instructors can create anthologies of primary works that can then be made available for multimedia student annotation, and Editions, which hosts published and private editions, galleries, maps, and timelines, and facilitates peer review. DHSI students will learn the COVE toolset and principle of “open assembly,” or free, transformative remixing of texts, items, and archives. They will build an anthology (in COVE Studio) and begin an Edition, Map, Gallery, or Timeline (in COVE Editions) that they can easily complete afterwards. They will then share these projects with the DHSI community.

Practical JavaScript for Interactive Scholarship
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Stephen Zweibel and Zachary Lloyd

This is a basic introduction to JavaScript, which is the programming language of the web. The class is designed for anyone interested in developing a website, or creating an interactive data visualization. By the end of this course, you will be able to read JavaScript you find online and adapt it to your needs. You will also have an opportunity to work with common JavaScript libraries/tools and enhance your own research practices.

Computational Text Analysis with Stylometry and R
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Joanna Byszuk and Jacek Bąkowski

This is a beginner to intermediate-level course in computational text analysis. It will focus on using digital tools to enhance and deepen traditional ways of reading and analyzing texts. We will explore ways of answering questions about authorship, textual, chronological, and authorial style, genre, and meaning, using some freely available and easy-to-use tools, such as ‘LIWC’ or ‘Stylo’ and most commonly applied methods, such as stylometry.While stylometry, i.e. the analysis of countable linguistic features of texts has been usually associated with authorship attribution, the same methods are successfully applied to more general text analysis, and, recently, even analysis of other modes such as music, image and video. The statistics of even such simple features as word, word n-gram or character n-gram frequencies are not only a highly precise tool for identifying authorship but can also reveal patterns of similarity and difference between groups of works, as well as individual works, or specific voices within them, such as idiolects of characters in novels. Such methods are also frequently applied to compare works by one author or various authors or translators, and finally between works differing in terms of chronology, genre or narrative styles, etc. The results of computational text analysis can be compared and confronted with the findings of traditional studies, opening a new set of questions about style and its transfer, as well as the nature of particular features and language.With this course, we aim to help participants build the knowledge and skills required to identify the problem they want to examine, define relevant research questions and apply the right method, and, finally, to design and complete their own experiments from corpus building to interpretation of results. Participants will learn how to use major modern stylometric methods in a reliable and reproducible manner, from simple keyword extraction and feature selection and analysis, to supervised and unsupervised machine learning based on text features, followed by visualization techniques ranging from PCA and dendrograms to networks. The software used in the course can easily be installed and run on participants’ own computers. While we do not expect the participants to have strong programming skills, having a basic understanding of running and reading code can improve the course experience and allow the participants to benefit more from the course. We will provide text corpora for training purposes but also encourage participants to bring their own data and research problems to work on during the course.

This course combines elements of courses previously taught at DHSI by Computational Stylistics Group (Maciej Eder, Jan Rybicki, Joanna Byszuk, Jeremi K. Ochab), i.e. ‘Stylometry with R’, ‘DIY Computational Text Analysis with R’, as well as ‘Out of the Box Text Analysis’ taught by late David Hoover.

Processing Your XML/TEI with the XML Family of Languages
2025-05-26 00:00 - 2025-05-30 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Elisa Beshero-Bondar and David Birnbaum

This class teaches you how to navigate and process XML using tools designed for the purpose–XSLT, XQuery, and Schematron. We cover these together as members of the same XML family, sharing a common syntax in XPath. New and experienced coders of XML will benefit alike from this course, whether just beginning a project or seeking to update and refresh skills. Our goals are 1) to share strategies for systematically building archives and databases, and 2) to increase participants’ confidence and fluency in extracting information coded in XML in those archives and databases. XPath is the center of the course, but we will show you how it applies in multiple XML processing contexts so that you learn how these work similarly and how these are used, respectively, to validate documents and to transform them for publication and other reuse. We’ll apply XPath to check for accuracy of text encoding–to write schema rules to manage your coding (or your project team’s coding).

You’ll practice and gain fluency in writing XPath expressions and patterns, including sequence expressions, regular expressions, datatypes, predicates, operators, and functions (from the core library and user-defined). We’ll write XPath to calculate how frequently you’ve marked a certain phenomenon, or locate which names of people are mentioned together in the same chapter, paragraph, sentence, stanza, or annotation. You’ll learn how XPath can help you to build exciting visualizations from XML code (such as to make a chart like a timeline or a network graph). Whether you are an XML beginner or a more experienced coder, you’ll find that strengthened skills in XPath and the XML family will help you with systematic encoding, document processing, and project management.

This is a hands-on course.

Data Bites - Creating README Files for Research Data
2025-06-02 00:00 - 23:59 | Ontario
Date: June 2 2025

This hands-on workshop, delivered by the UBC Library Research Data Management team, introduces the importance of README files in documenting research data for long-term access and reuse. Designed for graduate students, researchers, and staff, the session provides practical guidance for creating clear, consistent, and useful data documentation.

Participants will learn how to:

Use templates and open tools to create and maintain README files throughout the research lifecycle

Identify the key components of an effective README file, including dataset description, file structure, and usage instructions

Apply best practices to improve data transparency, usability, and alignment with FAIR principles

Presenter(s):Eugene Barsky, Vanessa Choy

DH Sample Platter
2025-06-02 00:00 - 2025-06-06 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Markus Wust

Have you ever looked at the wide variety of courses offered at DHSI and wondered what all those technical terms mean? Or had problems deciding on which technologies might be best suited for your work or most interesting to pursue further? This course is meant to provide a broad overview of technologies that are often used (and talked about) in the Digital Humanities. While it cannot (and is not meant to) serve as a replacement for any of the technology-focused workshops at DHSI, this course can provide a foundation to help you make informed decisions on where to direct further studies as well as get you over the initial hurdle. Each technology will be approached through a mixture of lectures and exercises.

Proposed topics: We will survey the following technologies and methods: How does a computer work?; Image and video editing; Audio recording and editing; XML and text encoding; Text analysis; 3D Modelling; Content Management Systems; and Geographic Information Systems. This course will have lecture, demo, and hands-on components. It is a good foundation for all tool- and technology-oriented DHSI offerings.

Coding Fundamentals for Humanists
2025-06-02 00:00 - 2025-06-06 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Marie-Hélène Burle and Tannia Chevez

This course is intended for humanities-based researchers with no programming background whatsoever who would like to understand how programs work behind the scenes by writing some simple but useful programs of their own. Over the week the emphasis will be on understanding how computer programmers think so that participants will be able to at least participate in high-level conceptual discussions in the future with more confidence. These general concepts will be reinforced and illustrated with hands-on development of simple programs that can be used to help with text-based research and analysis right away. The language used for most of the course will be Python because of its gentle syntax and powerful extensions. Using the command-line interface and regular expressions will also be emphasized. We will also spend some time taking glimpses at what is happening in the other DHSI courses to understand how reading and writing programming code goes well beyond what we touch on in this class.

This offering is co-sponsored by ACENET.

Race and Social Justice: DH Methods and Applications
2025-06-02 00:00 - 2025-06-06 23:59 | Université de Montréal, 3150 Rue Jean Brillant, Montreal, Québec, H3T 1N7, Canada
Led by: Dorothy Kim and Jordan Clapper

Over the past five years we have seen a proliferation of academic job advertisements, publications, and discussions demonstrating ways in which race and social justice can be engaged in digital humanities scholarship. Interest by students and local communities in technological advancements through Web 2.0, social media, and mobile phones are permitting new forms of research and practice. #transformDH, #DHpoco, #femDH, and #BlackLivesMatter have helped to challenge the all-white discourse, often dominated by scholars in the disciplines of English and history, that is too often found in digital humanities. What happens to students in digital humanities methods classes who bring non-traditional bodies into this world? There have been discussions how to insure that syllabi and materials for digital humanities classes are inclusive – specifically, how an introductory DH methods class keeps race, social justice, and inclusivity as cornerstones in their pedagogy. The traditional divides witnessed in the tech world will only be replicated in the world of both undergraduate and graduate DH courses without attention to race, social justice, etc. This week-long class will show how, through an interdisciplinary intersectional and CRT framework, both race and social justice can be central to any DH teaching, pedagogy, and practice. The course will pay special attention to queer theory, critical ethnic studies, postcolonial theory, WOC/Black feminism, Indigenous studies, and disability studies as they currently help to reshape digital humanities teaching and methods across our university/college classrooms.

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities.
