On 8–9 June 2015, the Digital Humanities Lab at the CVCE was very happy to participate in the second DH Benelux Conference hosted by the University of Antwerp. See the presentations below. We contributed a total of four paper presentations and one poster describing our work. Dr Catherine (Kate) Jones discussed the concept of developing tools for personal narrative making by reusing CVCE cultural heritage objects, whilst Dr Marten During and Dr Florentina Armaselu presented the first outcomes of exploring TEI annotation and network analysis within diplomatic documents. Dr Lars Wieneke on behalf of Dr Florentina Armaselu described the results of our recent collaboration with the University of Pisa and their EVT (Edition Visualisation Technology) software for the creation of new TEI encoded digital editions.
MyPublications: Enabling personal authoring and narrative making
Kate also presented results from the project she led prior to joining CVCE, which developed an augmented reality application to explore historical map data from the WW2 bomb census in London. She also participated in the lively closing panel discussion on the role of digital technology within the broader humanities discipline. Finally, the Director of the CVCE, Marianne Backes, co-authored a paper exploring the role of DARIAH and the Benelux.
The conference was very well attended, with more than 150 participants, and represented the strength of digital humanities within the Benelux region and beyond. The conference showcased the depth and variety of digital humanities research through presentations in a number of related themes: (1) Cyber Culture, (2) Reflection & Criticism (3) Distant Readings, (4) Linked Open Data, (5) Digital Scholarly Editing, (6) Curation & Collection, (7) Geospatial Applications and (8) Networks & Topics. Excellent keynotes were delivered by William Noel, Director of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, and Elena Pierazzo, Professor of Italian Studies and Digital Humanities at Stendhal–Grenoble 3 University.
Next year the CVCE is looking forward to co-hosting the conference with the University of Luxembourg.