Vienna Summer School on Digital Humanities

Traditional research in the social sciences and humanities is challenged by the emergence of new methods and tools that allow us to gain and compute more knowledge integrating various data sources. At the same time, our human experiences and our ways of learning and knowing are increasingly mediated by technology. More data than ever before are produced, captured and archived by scientists and citizens alike, and can be accessed and analyzed online.

This Summer School aims to discuss the possibilities of computer science-based research methods in the Digital Humanities while at the same time investigating the epistemological challenges of these methods as well as their theoretical bases and implications. It will explore a wide range of digital practices and methods that are becoming more and more widespread in the social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, the Summer School will offer participants hands-on experience with tools and techniques. The following topics will be covered:

Introduction to Digital Humanities and its methodological challenges;
Text mining with a focus on (a) news and (micro-)blogs mining and (b) opinion mining, sentiment analysis, and beyond;
Critical engagement with (especially online) data;
Theories of human-technology interaction – user tracking / digital traces / data bodies / quantified self and their implications for data collection, analysis and communication of results;
Social network analysis;
Information visualization and visual analytics.
A high-ranking international faculty with a variety of disciplinary and methodological backgrounds will present these topics: Bettina Berendt (KU Leuven, Belgium), Sema Colpan (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society, Austria), Noshir Contractor (Northwestern University, USA), Paolo Federico (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Ulrike Gretzel (University of Queensland, Australia), Theresia Gschwandtner (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Georg Kö (University of Bamberg, Germany), and Julia Neidhardt (Vienna University of Technology, Austria).

We invite dedicated PhD students to submit applications. The Summer School is specifically designed for students from the social sciences and humanities, with an emphasis on history, film and media studies, cultural studies, anthropology, human and cultural geography, linguistics, urban studies, sociology and arts.