Data Spirits
Within the humanities, disciplines speak and work in different ways. There is a wide variety of methods and objectives, which makes collaboration difficult. Data is an integral part of this, and working with it is as essential as it is mundane. This infrastructural layer is not just another problem, but a starting point for tracing ways of doing research in the humanities. The talk draws on an ethnography embedded in a long-term research institution, and the notion of data spirits refers to the ways in which these researchers create and mobilise data through intelligent processes to generate what they are looking for: spirited ideas.
Within the humanities, disciplines speak and work differently. There is a considerable variety of methodologies and felicity conditions. This makes collaboration tricky and an interesting area of research. Data is an integral part of these collaborations, well beyond what is called digital humanities. Even if researchers do not use the term, working with data is as essential as it is mundane. This infrastructural data layer is not just another problem, but a starting point for tracing ways of doing research in the humanities. The talk draws on an ethnography embedded in a long-term research institution consisting of dozens of projects, most of them in the humanities. Here, the notion of *data spirits* refers to the multiple ways, in which these researchers create and mobilise data through intelligent procedures to generate what they are looking for: spirited ideas. 💾🪸👻
Fabian Pittroff is a postdoctoral researcher in the CRC 1567 Virtual Lifewords at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Fabian's interests are data infrastructures in humanities research, the ethnography of the virtual, and the sociology of intelligences.
The lecture is also part of the RUSTlab Lectures at the RUSTLab of the Ruhr University Bochum.
Photo credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ouvrier-Oudry-La_Fontaine-Le_rat_des_villes_et_le_rat_des_champs.jpg, geditherd by https://eulervoid.com/dither/
