5 July 2010 - A week in Dublin in the summertime provided an engaged group of digital humanities scholars with the skills and interaction to empower their own research. Experts from the DHO and a superb group of invited scholars lectured, facilitated, and motivated through a series of innovative workshops and talks. Attendees from twelve countries on three continents had opportunities consider new ways to approach their own work and share their experience with their peers. This year's school built on past success and added new components such as a coffee and consultation session as well as new ventures into geospatial and virtual worlds that proved very popular.
A lecture by Dr Hugh Denard on 'Puppets, Players and Painted Stages: Virtual Worlds, Ancient and Modern' captivated the audience with a cutting edge demonstration of the ways in which researchers at the King's Visualisation Lab are using software platforms such as Second Life to engage in the study of classical surroundings by experiencing them in a virtual environment. Dr Ian Gregory from Lancaster University spun a compelling narrative demonstrating the close engagement between spatial representation and traditional historical research sources such as newspapers and manuscript census records. Four day strands in text encoding, XSLT transformation, image and data visualisation provided hands-on and threoretical presentations of cutting edge techniques in these core digital humanities skillsets. An exciting series of one-day workshops provided attendees with an added opportunity to explore areas of interest in diverse subjects such as virtual worlds, Irish digital resources, academic publishing, data modelling and geospatial methods. An unforgettable evening of harp entertainment was provided by Drs Emily and Benita Cullen, captivating all and creating a truly magical experience.
The DHO thanks all of those attending and those scholars who lent their expertise to deliver a world-class event. A gallery of photos from the summer school is also available.
