Geographical and linguistic diversity in the Digital Humanities

Abstract

Digital Humanities (DH) has come a long way towards establishing itself as a dynamic and innovative field of study. However, it has been pointed out that the DH community predominantly comprises scholars from a handful of mainly English-speaking countries, and a current challenge is achieving a broader internationalization of the DH community. This article provides an overview of the landscape in terms of geo-linguistic diversity, as well as reviewing current DH initiatives to broaden regional and linguistic diversity and identifies some of the main challenges ahead. The aim of this article is to serve as a benchmark of the current situation and suggest areas where further research is required. ................................................................................................................................................................................. 1. Geographical and Linguistic Diversity in the Digital Humanities Digital Humanities (DH) has come a long way towards establishing itself as a recognizable and valued area of academic activity. Pannapacker’s much cited comment that ‘Digital Humanities is the Next Big Thing’ (Pannapacker, 2009) is just the beginning of an array of articles, both within the academic and general press, about DH and its importance. Over the past few years, many DH centres and departments together with postgraduate courses have been created; the annual International DH Conference grows continuously and there are a number of other DH-related conferences, meetings, and events around the world. In the USA, the National Endowment for the Humanities created the Office of Digital Humanities, an important institutionalized recognition that DH projects are relevant and viable, and the term is rapidly becoming accepted by other funding agencies. In addition to the long-standing DH journals, in recent times, a number of books specifically describing the field have been published. All of these point towards an academic, networked, and productive community of scholars engaged in similar activities. As the community has grown, so has the amount of attention it receives and with it has come an increasing pressure to define exactly what is meant by the term Digital Humanities. Although historically the DH community has grappled with a definition, over the past few years there have been more vocal disagreements as we struggle to define what DH ‘is’ and what DH ‘does’. As Gold writes in his introduction to ‘Debates in the DH’, this is ‘a field in the midst of growing pains as its adherents expand from a small circle of like-minded scholars to a more heterogeneous set of practitioners who sometimes ask more disruptive questions’ (Gold, 2012). Coupled with the problem of defining DH (what we ‘are’ and what we ‘do’) there is now an additional and ineludible problem: ‘who is ‘‘we’’?’ Traditionally, DH has been built on a strong sense of community and much work over the past few decades has been done by enthusiastic and generous scholars. Collaboration and cooperation are seen as Correspondence: Isabel Galina Russell,