ETHNOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract: How might the surge of digital materials, digital tools and methods affect traditional ethnographic practice? In order to address this question we look at the Digital Humanities and discuss what Ethnographers might be able to learn from the Digital Humanities. How do Digital Humanists incorporate the “digital” into their research? What are their tools, practices, methodological frameworks, findings and outcomes and how might those be relevant for ethnographers? Using selected case studies we discuss opportunities and challenges of a DH approach for ethnographic research.

Bios: 

Claudia Engel collaborates with students and faculty on digital research projects in the Anthropology Department, where she also has a lecturer appointment and teaches courses on GIS and Digital Methods. She is also member of the Research Data Services (RDS) Division and the Center of Interdisciplinary Digital Scholarship (CIDR) at the Stanford Libraries. In that role she supports Humanities and Social Science researchers in the use of the increasing number of the Libraries' digital data repositories.

Catherine Nicole Coleman is Digital Research Architect for the Stanford University Libraries and Research Director for Humanities+Design, a research lab at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis. Nicole works at the intersection of the digital library and digital scholarship as a lead architect in the design and development of practical research services. She is currently leading an initiative within the Library to identify and enact applications of artificial intelligence —machine perception, machine learning, machine reasoning, and language recognition— to make the collections of maps, photographs, manuscripts, data sets and other assets more easily discoverable, accessible, and analyzable.