What are/is the Computational Humanities?

Computational Humanities is devoted to the application and development of computational and quantitative approaches to humanities data in all its forms. Computational humanities has been an integral part of Digital Humanities since its beginnings, but recent years have seen a particularly favorable context, with increased interest and investment in research around the world.

The group

The Computational Humanities research group within the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London brings researchers active in Computational Humanities. The aims of the group are to build a research environment dedicated to CH research, particularly for early-stage career researchers, showcase computational research ongoing in the department of Digital Humanities and beyond via regular seminars and events, attract new research opportunities in the CH space, strengthen links with relevant groups and initiatives, and develop research funding applications.

Our objectives/interests

The group investigates how computational methods augment and transform humanities scholarship. The following themes and groups of questions are central to the group's scope:

• Computational analysis of cultural and social phenomena: How can data science methods be applied to large datasets to study questions in the humanities, particularly in history, art history, geography, archaeology, literary studies, and media studies?
• Open humanities data: How can open research practices be embedded in humanities research? What are the advantages and peculiarities of open data and data publishing for humanities researchers?
• Critical technical practice and the calculation of meanings: how can we critically research and computationally intervene in the calculation of meanings in language, images, and symbols?
• Synthetic media and generative approaches in computational humanities: How to incorporate large general purpose computational models and the forms of synthetic media they produce as tools and objects of research in humanities computing?

For more information, please visit the group’s page on King's College London Digital Humanities.

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Outlined below are specific sub-areas of interest within the group’s scope, together with the respective leads responsible for each domain:

• Computational History and Computational Social Science: Mark J. Hill
• Computational Literary Studies: Erik Ketzan
• Computational Linguistics & Computational Classics: Barbara McGillivray.
• Computational Creativity & Synthetic Media: Daniel Chávez Heras
• Geo-Analytics: Andrea Ballatore
• Music Computing: Mark Gotham