Cambridge Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities is an area of strategic importance to the University of Cambridge. Cambridge Digital Humanities, established in 2017, is an interdisciplinary research centre, homed in the School of Arts and Humanities, shared with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and crossing multiple Schools and other units including the University Library, Cambridge collections and other research centres. It is currently hosted administratively by CRASSH, and has, in 2022, welcomed its first cohort of students for the MPhil in Digital Humanities, based in the Faculty of English.

We define Digital Humanities as encompassing work on the cultural, social, and epistemic impacts of digital technologies (around data, on everyday life, in relation to literary, cultural forms, medium studies, including issues of technocratic rationality, power and justice); digital research methodologies; computational humanities; digital libraries and archival-based research; digital performance, and exhibition (including in cultural institutions); and research exploring cultural and social impacts of emerging technologies – notably around data, and AI informed developments in, for example, face recognition, automatic writing and the social/cultural implications of robotics.

CDH collaborates with researchers to generate and develop Digital Humanities scholarship across the arts and humanities. We create and deliver research projects, explore emerging research areas, and collaborate with international partners. We work with Cambridge University Library, Cambridge University collections, and multiple faculties and research centres. We collaborate with a wide range of international partners in Europe and the US, and a priority is to develop deeper Global South links. Our aim is to further an expansive form of Digital Humanities that encompasses work with collections, literature as digital humanities, global digital humanities, critical media theorization, digital media, methodological advancement, future and emerging technologies including AI and machine learning.