The NeDiMAH workgroup on Space and Time

The NeDiMAH workgroup on
Space and Time
Daniel Alves, IHC-FCSH, New University of Lisbon
DHLU Symposium 2013 in Luxembourg, 5-6 December 2013

NeDiMAH
• Objectives and structure:
• Examine the practice of digital methods in the arts and
humanities across Europe.
• Networking and interdisciplinary exchange of expertise.
• Network organized in a series of thematic Working Groups.
• Connections to national and international infrastructure
initiatives such as DARIAH
• Expected outputs:
• A map of ICT methodological commons; ICT Methods
Ontology; a collaborative forum for the European Digital
Humanities

NeDiMAH
• Coordination:
• Lorna Hughes (Chair)
• Susan Schreibman (Co-chair)
• Fotis Jannidis (Co-chair)
• Lloyd Roderick (Scientific Co-ordinator)
• Andrew Cusworth (Scientific Co-ordinator)
• Steering Committee:
• One representative from each national funding
agency + chairs of each working group

NeDiMAH
• 16 ESF Member Countries support the
NeDiMAH programme:
• Bulgaria, Republic of Croatia, Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland,
Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and United
Kingdom

NeDiMAH
• 6 Working Groups:
• Space & Time
• Information Visualisation
• Linked Data & Ontological Methods
• Building & Developing Collections of Digital Data for
Research
• Using Large-Scale Text Collections for Research
• Scholarly Digital Editions
• 2 Cross-team Groups:
• Development of the ICT Methods Taxonomy
• Impact of ICT Research Methods on Scholarly Publishing

NeDiMAH
• The working groups are responsible for:
• Investigating the use of the methods and
gathering information about specific projects
that use those methods around Europe
• Analysis of current practice
• Modelling ways in which the methods can be
applied across the disciplines in scholarly
practice

“Space & Time” workgroup
• Questions:
• Space and Time as cross-cutting concepts
• Geospatial technologies and methods for temporal analysis
• Several digital approaches to these concepts and methods
• Several available tools
• Activities:
• Workshops
– Current trends in the field
– Methods and tools
– Gaps and problems
– Collaboration and interdisciplinary

“Space & Time” workgroup
• People:
• Daniel Alves, New University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Jens Andresen, University of Aarhus, Denmark
• Shawn Day, University College Cork, Ireland
• Øyvind Eide, University of Oslo, Norway
• Eero Hyvönen, Aalto University, Finland
• Leif Isaksen, University of Southampton, United
Kingdom (Chair)
• Eetu Mäkelä, Aalto University, Finland

STWG first workshop
• “Place, Period, Event: Entity-based
approaches to Space and Time”
• London, 30 November 2011
• 9 presentations
• 48 participants
• 3 sessions (place, period, event)
• Discussion sessions

STWG first workshop
• Results:
• Methods and technologies now firmly established
as ‘best practice’
• Gazeetters, thesauri and ontologies
• Discussions about gaps and future needs
• Adoption of methods and tools remain sparse
• Need for further consolidation and definition
• Need for better connection with mainstream
technologies

STWG second workshop
• “Here and There, Then and Now – Modelling
Space and Time in the Humanities”
• Pre-Conference workshop at the Digital
Humanities Conference in Hamburg, 17 July 2012
• 8 presentations
• 65 participants
• 2 sessions (theory and tools)
• 4 discussion sessions (theory, methods, tools and
infrastructures)

STWG second workshop
• Results:
• Uses of tools designed for non‐humanities research
• Literacy about tools / Critical use of tools
• Methods as a bridge between different experts and humanists
• Relevance of APIs (Application programming interface)
• Need for more explorations of space and time represented in
texts, audio, and video
• Stimulate the adoption of standards
• Need for greater Open Access within our domain
• Better ways of representing uncertainty and ambiguity

STWG third workshop
• “Networks over space and time: modelling,
analyzing, and representing complex data in
the digital humanities”
• Lisbon, 8 November 2013
• 8 presentations
• 68 participants
• 4 sessions (transports, social, models, theory)
• Discussions between sessions

STWG third workshop
• Transports and social networks:
• Questions about concepts: predictability, speed,
accessibility, cost, and timing
• Questions about different methods: raster vs.
Vector approaches
• Questions about data: not always available in
large scale and the need to use generalizations
• Social distances vs. Spatial distances
• Issues about visualizations and the “black box”
effect

STWG third workshop
• Network models and theory:
• Again the discussion about alternative ways of measuring
distances
• Need for the evaluation of different models, before starting
the analysis
• Discussions on concepts of complexity, emergence and self-organization
• Micro and macro levels in networks
• Networks visualizations as ways to deal with data issues
and to raise new research questions
• Challenges in network visualization: network size; variation
over time; spatial analysis; dynamic networks and problems
with visualizations

STWG third workshop
• Results:
• Dynamics and change were important subjects in several
presentations and in the discussions
• Need for proper dynamics to capture and analyze the
temporal data
• Discussions about the role and limitations of GIS for this type
of analysis
• Importance of Open Data and the challenges it represents
• Better connection between visualisations and the source data
• Need for more network modelling
• Need to test robustness of data

Thank you!
• Email: alves.r.daniel@gmail.com
• Twitter: @DanielAlvesFCSH

The NeDiMAH workgroup on Space and Time

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