Paul is a Reader in the Department of Digital Humanities. His background is in modern languages, digital methods, digital pedagogy and structured knowledge representation.

His research currently focuses on digital publishing, global perspectives on digital scholarship and interactions between modern languages and digital culture. Through his work on the Language Acts and Worldmaking project (https://languageacts.org/digital-mediations/, he has focused in particular on interactions between languages, multilingualism, linguistic diversity and digital practice. He researches digital transformations in how we engage with languages, while also analysing the power of language to disrupt digital monolingualism in knowledge infrastructures, methods and data http://tinyurl.com/disruptingdigital / https://zenodo.org/record/5743283.

He is particularly active in Spanish language digital humanities, digital modern languages and multilingual digital humanities networks.

He has led and managed digital humanities research on a number of major interdisciplinary projects of a total value of £5 million, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AHRC, JISC, Leverhulme Trust and various European funding agencies.

He has twice been acting Head of Department for DDH, has played several senior roles in international digital humanities organisations, and he currently co-ordinates the department’s PhD programme.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

His research interests are currently in four main areas:

• digital humanities
• digital publishing
• digital multilingualism
• digital modern languages

He has also carried out research in:

• digital textual scholarship
• digital humanities pedagogy

Paul welcomes applications for PhD topics related to any of his research interests. For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

Paul has extensive experience in teaching the digital humanities at BA and postgraduate level. He was programme director for the MA in Digital Humanities for a number of years and teaches across a broad range of topics in the digital humanities including digital publishing, structured/linked data, text annotation, project management, public digital humanities, digital methods, digitally mediated knowledge production and global digital humanities.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Paul is engaged in impact activities relating to the effects of digital mediation across the spectrum of language education. A recent publication which he co-edited studies transformations in post-pandemic pedagogies from primary school to higher education, and from virtual learning worlds to language-based cultural institutions in the UK.

The Disrupting Digital Monolingualism event/report he co-directed brought together leading researchers, educators, digital practitioners, language-focused professionals and policy makers to explore the current state of multilingualism in digital theory and practice through, and across, languages and cultures: https://zenodo.org/record/5743283. 

Selected publications

• Spence, P. and Brandao, R. (2022) ‘Digital Mediations and Advanced Critical Literacies In Modern Languages And Cultures’, in Boyle, C. and Kelly, D. (eds). Language Acts and Worldmaking: How and Why the Languages We Use Shape Our World and Lives. London: John Murray Press, pp. 210-240.
• Spence, P. and Brandao, R., (2021) ‘Towards Language Sensitivity and Diversity in the Digital Humanities’, Digital Studies / Le champ numérique, 11(1). https://www.digitalstudies.org/article/id/8098/
• Spence, P. and Wells, N. (2021) ‘Digital Modern Languages Launch Issue’. Modern Languages Open. DOI: http://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.412
• Spence, P. (2021) Disrupting Digital Monolingualism: A report on multilingualism in digital theory and practice (1.0). Language Acts and Worldmaking project. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5743283
• Spence, P. and Brandao, R. (2021) ‘Digital Mediations’, in De Medeiros, A. and Kelly, D. (eds). Language Debates: Theory and Reality in Language Learning, Teaching and Research (Language Acts and Worldmaking). London: John Murray Press, pp. 237-310.
• Spence, P. and Brandao, R. (2020) ‘Critical Digital Pedagogies in Modern Languages – a Tutorial Collection’. Modern Languages Open. DOI: http://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.343
• Spence, P. and Brandão, R. (2019) Attitudes towards digital culture and technology in the Modern Languages. London: Digital Mediations, King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-001
• Spence, P. (2018) 'The academic book and its digital dilemmas', Convergence, 2(5), pp. 458-476. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856518772029