Introduction to Digital Humanities - Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2026

If you are new to digital humanities, this lecture-based survey strand gives you a thorough overview of the theory and practice of the subject. We draw on expertise from across the University of Oxford and our national and international collaborators, and on the University's library collections tow give you an insight into what digital humanities is, why it can be useful in research, and some examples of digital humanities in practice. This strand will appeal to anyone new to the field, or curious to broaden their understanding of the range of work the digital humanities encompass.

The strand will be a mixture of lectures, discussions and some practical workshops so you will understand how your research or work can benefit from digital humanities theories, practices or policies.

David De Roure

Director of Digital Scholarship @ Oxford

and the Oxford e-Research Centre

David De Roure is Academic Director of the Digital Scholarship @ Oxford initiative and Professor of e-Research at the Oxford e-Research Centre, an institute of the Department of Engineering Science. He is also an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he is Technical Director of the Centre for Practice and Research in Science and Music (PRISM), and a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute.

David's personal research is at the intersection of music, maths, machines and AI, empowering the creative human in music composition and performance. From an early background in electronics and computer science, David became closely involved in the Hypertext, Web, and computational research communities, in pervasive computing, and in digital social research. His broad range of interdisciplinary research has investigated emerging technologies in large-scale distributed and sociotechnical systems, with an interest in society, technology and creativity, while also focusing on innovation in the process of scholarship. Today he focuses on new methods of digital scholarship, innovation in knowledge infrastructure, and living in the Internet of Things. David has been involved in running the DHOxSS since 2011.

Exact times of sessions are subject to change before summer school commences.

09:00 - 10:30: Opening Keynote: Information & Interaction: Scholarship at the Nexus of (Hu)Man and Machine

Abstract: The Digital Humanities are a broad community. It embraces methodological diversity, and brings together domain experts from across the wide landscape of the Humanities. Events such as the DHOxSS stand as testament to the richness of the field, and present us with unique opportunities for information exchange, knowledge acquisition, and upskilling. This talk takes a moment to recognise the community of DHers that has contributed to a body of work that uses the Linked Data information publication paradigm with datasets from the Humanities. These projects are case study examples that celebrate the ways in which the Digital Humanities are not just about developing computational systems, but also about the immense value and effect of human infrastructure as part of our research.

Speaker: Dr Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller (RMIT University)

Dr Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller is an Associate Professor, Information Interaction at the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

10:30-11:00 Refreshment break

11:00-12:30 An Introduction to the Introduction

This session is an introduction to the Introductory strand. We know Digital Humanities can be daunting – it’s hard to know what it is, which tools to use, and what skills you need to learn before embarking on your first (or third, or fifth!) DH project. This session will give you an introduction to the DH project lifecycle as a starting point for planning your dissertation, thesis or next big research project. We will work together to share the kinds of data, methods, and research questions we encounter in our own disciplines, and then expand on how you can manage your DH data effectively to give you results in the short-term, and your DH project a lengthy life as a resource for other scholars.

Speaker: Megan Gooch (University of Oxford)

Megan Gooch is the Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities Support, and has worked in museums and heritage. David de Roure is the Director of Digital Scholarship at Oxford.

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 to 15:30: The Visual AI Project

This session offers an introduction to the practical use of computer vision within the humanities, based on collaborations between Oxford’s Visual Geometry Group (VGG) and researchers in fields such as book and art history, media and film studies, archaeology, classics and architecture. Attendees will learn how collections of images can be searched, segmented, classified and compared, and will have the opportunity to try these methods for themselves using online demos. No prior knowledge of computer vision or visual AI is assumed.

Speaker: Giles Bergel (University of Oxford)

Giles Bergel is Senior Researcher in Digital Humanities in the Visual Geometry Group, and a member of the Oxford e-Research Centre. Trained originally in the humanities as a book historian, his research focuses on the computational analysis of books and other cultural heritage collections.

15:30-16:00 Refreshment break

16:00 to 17:00: Digital Editions

The first part of this presentation will consider what the migration of critical editions to digital platforms offers the researcher; the relationship between the digital as a replication of the print edition and the status of the digital edition; how digital resources can enhance scholarly work and what the challenges are for electronic scholarly editors in an editorial environment that is more fluid than bibliographic editing; and why dynamic databases can enable a more collaborative critical engagement of reader with editor than has been possible previously. The second part will focus specifically on the challenges and opportunities raised by the creation of digital editions of historical correspondence, focusing on the work of Electronic Enlightenment. We will cover the processes of standardising dates, locations, and geographical locations for machine readability; the differences between the print editions we work with and our final output and, in an interactive workshop, invite participants to consider how to convert the limited, provisional information they can gather about a historical letter into an EE-ready metadata object.

Speakers: Jack Orchard, Mark Rogerson, Nicole Pohl (University of Oxford)

Jack Orchard is Content Editor for Electronic Enlightenment and co-convenor of the Introduction to Digital Humanities strand at the 2025 Summer School. Mark Rogerson is the Technical Editor for Electronic Enlightenment. Nicole Pohl is the Academic Editor for Electronic Enlightenment as well as the General Editor of the Elizabeth Montagu's Correspondence Online project (EMCO), her research focuses on salons in central Europe in the 18th century, and the is the author of numerous works on eighteenth-century women's social and intellectual networks and utopian literature.

09:00-10:30 Introducing Linked Data

Linked Data is a method for publishing information online. It relies on representing information through the capture of specific data points (such as people, places, and events) and the relationships between them as an interconnected graph. In this session, we will look at examples of such graphs, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this methodology for knowledge representation and information publication for use in Digital Humanities projects

Speaker: Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller (RMIT University)

Dr Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller is an Associate Professor, Information Interaction at the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her interdisciplinary research examines different methods for data linking and integration, and how digital technologies support and diversify research. She is the author of “Linked Data for Digital Humanities” (2023, Routledge), and has publications that cover a range of topics from the use, development, and critical evaluation of Linked Data to gamification and informal online environments in education. She has also created 3D digital models for the British Museum (cuneiform tablets), the National Museum of Australia (carved boab nuts), and UNESCO (Fels Cave in Vanuatu). Terhi is an Honorary Associate Professor at POLIS, the Centre for Social Policy and Research at the Australian National University; a member of the Territory Records Advisory Council, Policy and Cabinet Division, of the Chief Minister Australian Capital Territory Government; and a co-chair of the Australian Government Linked Data Working Group.

10:30-11:00 Refreshment break

11:00-12:30 Introduction to TEI

An introduction to the basics and principles of text encoding and its long history in humanities research. This talk will cover the reasons behind and benefits of encoding different aspects of texts, from structural components (e.g. column, stanza) to form (e.g. raised letter, marginalia) to state of preservation (e.g. gap, overstrike) to content (e.g. place name, numeral). We will look at data modelling using different types of documents and levels of encoding and description which would suit them best. We will talk about generating search and indexing, recording multiple scholarly interpretations and data linking and interchange. A brief history of the Text Encoding Initiative will follow, covering its subsets and special interest groups.

Speaker: Simona Stoyanova (University of Oxford)

Simona Stoyanova has worked in Digital Classics for more than ten years, both in the UK and abroad, primarily on epigraphic documents and other ancient and medieval primary sources. Projects include Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica and IOSPE: Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea (both KCL), the Open Greek and Latin project for digitisation of ancient sources in the public domain as part of the Perseus Digital Library (Leipzig), the ERC project LatinNow, working on the epigraphic database and managing collaborations with Digital Humanities partners (Nottingham). She is currently working on the ERC Crossreads project studying the multilingual epigraphic landscape of ancient Sicily. She is a co-author of the EpiDoc Guidelines (http://www.stoa.org/epidoc/gl/latest/) and stylesheets for XML encoding and publication of ancient documents. In the last few years she has been providing TEI XML expertise and consultation for the encoding of ancient and medieval documents on a number of projects, as well as in-person and online training.

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 What Could Research Software Engineers do for you?

Within an ever-changing and ever-evolving landscape of new research questions and new tools with which to answer them, Digital Humanities as a field has also cultivated a complete transformation of how collaborative research looks in practice. A role which has become essential to DH projects across the discipline is that of the Research Software Engineer, or RSE. With a range of specialities across the fields of computer science, data science, AI, data visualisation and much more, RSEs work with academic partners to explore the ways in which digital methodologies can benefit or transform their research. In this session we will hear from three RSEs and Digital Scholarship at Oxford's own Research Facilitator on how Oxford's community of RSEs was created, the type of work they do, and how building space for RSEs in research budgets and proposals is a key part in contemporary large- and small-scale DH research.

Speaker: Andrew Cusworth, Vinod Kumar, Miguel Arana-Catania and Imran Asif (University of Oxford)

15:30-16:00 Refreshment break

16:00-17:00 What's your DH Origin Story? a Research Speed-Dating Session

Abstract - In this interactive session, we will give strand participants the opportunity to share their own experiences and interests in Digital Humanites. Everyone in the Digital Humanities Summer School Team have wildly diverse Digital Humanities origin stories - from museums and cultural heritage, to research support, to conversion at the hands of a DH evangelist, no two DH specialists come to the field in precisely the same way. Using the format of a speed-dating session, with limited time slots and rotating partners, we hope to capture the diversity of experiences with which you are coming to the Summer School, and hopefully build some connections and networking opportunities as well.

Speakers: Jack Orchard and Megan Gooch

09:00-10:30 An Introduction to Metadata

Miranda, who is the Senior Editor of Early Modern Letters Online, will take you ‘behind the scenes’ of a union catalogue to consider metadata and the datasets they nestle within and around. She will explain how metadata are created, why and when they have to be standardized, and give you an insight into the collaborative data-collation work she has overseen for the past eighteen years.

Speaker: Miranda Lewis (University of Oxford)

Miranda Lewis is the Director of Early Modern Letters Online.

10:30-11:00 Refreshment break

11:00 to 12:30: IIIF - the International Image Interoperability Framework

With the increasing volume of digitised materials being made available via the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), it is becoming an integral part of digital humanities workflows. This session will introduce you to the basics of IIIF and provide some examples of how it can be combined with other digital tools in such workflows.

Speaker: Neil Jefferies (University of Oxford)

Neil Jefferies is an Innovation Specialist at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford and Executive Director of the Open Preservation Foundation. He is a co-creator of the International Image Interoperability Framework and the Oxford Common File Layout for the preservation of digital objects, and most recently worked on Text Interoperability API's.

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 Machining the Archive

When is an archive digital? How does it relate to its non-digital forebear? What happens in a search? How do these questions affect how archives are used, how scholarship happens, how materials mean? These and other topics form the basis of a lecture & discussion considering some of the foundational questions of digital archival practice.

Speakers: Andrew Cusworth

Dr Andrew Cusworth is Programme Manager & Senior Research Facilitator, Digital Scholarship at Oxford (DiSc)

15:30-16:00 Refreshment break

16:00-17:00 What's In a Name? Considering Digital Humanities from the Margins?

In a first for the Digital Humanities Summer school, this session will explore the structural underpinnings and potential futures of Digital Humanities by exploring a range of disciplines which are DH-adjacent, but not generally considered a core part of the field. This session will address Videogame Studies, Museum Studies, Information Studies, and Memory Studies by mapping them onto the theoretical and methodological structures of Digital Humanities, before an open discussion session in which attendees will be invited to consider that ubiquitous question “What is DH?” and think in the broadest terms about how its underlying principles can be deployed, to ultimately see just how wide DH approaches can extend.

Speakers: Jack Orchard and Megan Gooch

09:00-10:30 3D Modelling and Digital Cultural Heritage

In this talk Matthew Nicholls will introduce his 3D digital model of Ancient Rome, which has been used extensively in teaching, broadcast, industry collaborations, and public-facing work in ancient history (including this year in the production of Gladiator II). The talk will introduce 3D modelling as an accessible tool for use in many research and teaching contexts, and include a short interactive element for those who want to try out the free modelling tool ‘SketchUp’, using their own device.

Speaker: Matthew Nicholls

Prof Matthew Nicholls is the Senior Tutor at St John’s College and a Roman historian. His digital model of Ancient Rome has been used as the basis of a popular online course at Reading University, and it currently being adapted for display in the Ashmolean Museum’s Rome gallery.

10:30-11:00 Refreshment break

11:00 to 12:30: Introduction to Relational Databases

This session looks at what a relational database is, and when and why it might be helpful to use one. It introduces some basic database concepts, and works through the process of planning a relational database - with some hands-on exercises to help start putting the theory into practice. We also look at some challenges posed by the sort of data often used in humanities projects, and how these might be addressed.

Speakers: Meriel Patrick (University of Oxford)

Meriel Patrick is a Research Technology Specialist in the Research Support team at the University of Oxford's IT Services.

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 A Digital Humanities Toolkit

From a perspective of "the affordances of the digital" we look conceptually and practically at the digital approaches available to support humanities research, ranging from quantitative techniques to crowdsourcing, and our ability not just to use but to create new tools and infrastructures. The talk will draw on practical examples which participants can try for themselves.

Speaker: David De Roure (University of Oxford)

David de Roure is the Director of Digital Scholarship at Oxford.

15:30-16:00 Refreshment break

16:00-17:00 AI and Creativity

We start our long view with Ada Lovelace in 1843, who wrote about a computer generating music and also questioned whether it can originate anything new. We go on to explore Margaret Boden’s three forms of creativity, and consider a series of examples involving AI as creative assistant in both text and music – including humans and AI interacting in live performance. The talk draws on collections in University of Oxford and collaborations with the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Speakers: David de Roure (University of Oxford)

David de Roure is the Director of Digital Scholarship at Oxford.

09:00-10:30 Sounding Out Data: Sonic Approaches to the Humanities

This session will introduce you to sound as a way of representing data, such as sonification, and listening as a critical practice. The first part will situate these practices with other sonic methods. The second part will be a practical section will provide you with an opportunity to design or develop a sonification using available tools. The final part will discuss what your reflections on what you heard or discovered. The session will provide you with references to support ongoing practice.

Speaker: Iain Emsley (University of Warwick)

Iain Emsley is a Research Software Engineer at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. He teaches practical sessions on the Digital Media and Culture and Study Skills courses. His DISKAH Fellowship project is tracing the presence of AI in Android applications. He is researching the representation of sound in its relationship with computing and has submitted his first book on distant sonification based on his thesis.

10:30-11:00 Refreshment break

11:00-12:30 A History of Digital Humanities

This talk takes a long view on Digital Humanities, and sets the scene for discussions about the future. We draw in particular on 50 years of Humanities Computing (as it was previously called) in University of Oxford, where the Oxford Text Archive was created in 1976 and the DHOxSS Summer School has been running since 2011. The scope of the talk is digital scholarship, embracing an interdisciplinary perspective, and we will touch on the changing digital culture in education, on our changing relationship with knowledge infrastructure, on the humanities of the digital, and suggest lenses to consider the future evolution of scholarly practice in the context of the research university.

Speakers: David de Roure (University of Oxford), Martin Wynne (University of Oxford), Pip Wilcox (Lambeth Palace Library)

Martin Wynne is Senior Researcher in Corpus Linguistics at the University of Oxford and National Coordinator for the CLARIN European Research Infrastructure Consortium in the UK. He currently manages the OTA as a national service, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and teaches a methods course in Text Analysis on the Digital Scholarship course at the University of Oxford.

Pip Willcox is Head of Lambeth Palace Library and has worked across research, libraries and archives, including at the University of Oxford, where she was based at the Bodleian Libraries and established the Centre for Digital Scholarship and the MSc in Digital Scholarship. She later served as Head of Research at The National Archives, where she developed and led a multidisciplinary research programme spanning collections, archival practice, digital methods and heritage science.

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:00 Artificial Intelligence and Digital Humanities: The State of Play

Drawing on the collective expertise gathered at the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, this roundtable session addresses the hottest topic in the digital sphere of the present day, Artificial Intelligence. This discussion will be followed with an opportunity for audience Q and A.

Speakers: Dave de Roure, Giles Bergel, Terhi Nurmikko Fuller

15:00-15:30 Refreshment break

15:30-17:00 Closing Keynote: AI, Archives, and the Synthetic Past

Abstract: What counts as the past when AI can generate voices, personas, and narratives from archival and digital traces? This presentation examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping relationships between memory, archives, and historical representation, and asks how these technologies are changing the ways the past is experienced in the present. Drawing on the Leverhulme Trust-funded research project Synthetic Pasts - including our critical-creative research on “AI afterlives” - the talk explores how computational systems simulate, mediate, distort, and commercialise forms of remembrance and cultural memory. It then invites digital humanities researchers to reflect on the conceptual, ethical, and methodological challenges that follow.

Speaker: Dr Jenny Kidd (University of Cardiff)

Dr. Jenny Kidd is a Reader in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University and researches in the interdisciplinary fields of Digital Heritage and Digital Culture.