Category Archives: visions & aims

Articles under this category deal with more vague ideas or distant hopes and wishes. What should QDA be like? What could it do? How should, must or will QDA-software change?

Digital Humanities in 2040: Four Scenarios

It’s the year 2040, are the Digital Humanities still around? In general, I see four possible scenarios: DH replaces the Humanities, DH becomes its own discipline, DH turns into IT assistance and DH fades away. According to a short survey on Twitter, the second scenario is considered most likely. Whatever the outcome, I argue, the future of DH will depend on what results they deliver and what lasting contribution they can make to the Humanities as a whole.

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Digital Humanities & Witchcraft: A Comparison

The following is a – not 100% serious – mini-speech I prepared for the Walpurgis-Night-Special (30th of March) of the Digital Humanities regulars’ table in Halle (#DHAL). It draws conclusions by looking on the many commonalities between Digital Humanities researchers in the present and people accused of witchcraft in the Early Modern period.

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Qualitative Methods in Digital Humanities

At present Digital Humanities (DH) are a field strongly dominated by quantitative-oriented researchers (Quants). But many fields are still dominated by qualitative researchers (Qualis) and there are good reasons for that. Our aim must not be to turn analog Qualis into digital Quants, but rather to help each approach in order to integrate their unique skills in a more fully and diverse field of “Digital Humanities” that breaches the qualitative-quantitative divide.

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Digital Humanities Method Meeting? Some thoughts on the DHd2019

While attending the Digital Humanities conference “DHd2019” in Frankfurt (25.-29.3.), I felt that methods and software demos were quite dominant. I loved the panel: “Digital Humanities from Scratch”. In a fresh and lively discussion, the question of the day to day role of the “Digital Humanist” was debated. Are Digital Humanists regarded as a “tech assistant”, a “researcher”, a “project manager” or all of that? In my opinion the third (project management) is the most attractive role for a future career with a DH background.

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