Stéfan Sinclair on “4Humanities for whom? Contexts, Motivations and Examples of a Grassroots Humanities Advocacy Collective”
Time: February 27, 2014. 12-1pm
Location: Cornett Building B135, University of Victoria
Abstract: 4Humanities was formed in late 2010 as a grassroots collective of digital humanities scholars, teachers, students and practitioners who care deeply about the roles and the perceptions of the humanities in contemporary society. The 4Humanities collective has sought to compile and produce useful resources and perspectives for humanities advocacy while remaining sensitive to diversity and pluralities within communities. I will describe the genesis, development and some of the activities of the 4Humanities collective, such as the “Humanities Matter!” infographic and the more recent partnership with the DHMakerBus group on the “Humanities Matter Tour Bus”. Finally, I will present some examples of research initiatives such as topic modelling of the “WhatEvery1Says” corpus at UC Santa Barbara and a DH-inflected analysis of recent CSEC incidents related to citizen privacy and security.
Bio: Stéfan Sinclair is an Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at McGill University. His primary area of research is in the design, development, usage and theorization of tools for the digital humanities, especially for text analysis and visualization. He has led or contributed significantly to projects such as Voyant Tools, the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR), the MONK Project, the Simulated Environment for Theatre, the Mandala Browser, and BonPatron. In additional to his work developing sophisticated scholarly tools, he has numerous publications related to research and teaching in the Digital Humanities, including Visual Interface Design for Digital Cultural Heritage, co-authored with Stan Ruecker and Milena Radzikowska (Ashgate 2011).
