Power Asymmetries of eHumanities Infrastructures

Abstract

Digital research infrastructures simultaneously enable and confine the research practices of scholars, constituting a power relation. This power relation can be characterised as a power asymmetry, with scholars dependent on the developers of infrastructures. In order to reduce this power asymmetry, infrastructures are developed in collaboration between scholars and computational researchers. Through an analysis of over twenty interviews, I will investigate the role of knowledge asymmetry, the ignorance of how a collaborator performs their tasks, and how this relates to power asymmetry in eScience collaborations in digital history. I will moreover consider how these asymmetries pose a challenge in the development and adoption of research infrastructures in the humanities.