Overview
Key digital developments, such as increasing volumes of available data, the automation of data collection, and the critical adoption of digital and computational methods across the humanities and social sciences have had profound effects not only on academic research but also on what qualifies as knowledge.
This course offers an introduction to digital methods and practical experience of how to use a range of digital tools, techniques, and software to study culture and society.
Participants will explore how digital methods and methodologies have shifted and changed over time, including their affordances and limitations. They will be introduced to state-of-the-art approaches (e.g. geospatial methods, mobile methods, operational methods, text mining, data visualisation and algorithmic ethnography) and have a chance to apply them to create, analyse and question data.
The participants will also explore the usefulness of digital methods for their own research projects as well as the methods’ ethical and open-science implications.
Meet your course leads
The course is taught by the Digital Humanities, Media and Culture team based in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures. To find out more about the team please click on the links below:
- Sam Hind, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture
- Luca Scholz, Lecturer in Digital Humanities and History
- Łukasz Szulc, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture
- Joanna Taylor, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Digital Humanities
- Shuaishuai Wang, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture
Course aims
This course's aim is to introduce participants to several key digital methods and support you to critically reflect on their affordances and limitations.
By the end of the course, the participants should be able to:
- Analyse and critique how digital methods and methodologies are used to generate and question knowledge
- Assess and evaluate a range of digital technologies for particular research questions
- Apply a range of digital tools to offer novel perspectives on important cultural and social issues
- Compare and contrast different digital research methods, their advantages and limitations
- Critically reflect on the ethical and open-science implications of using digital methods
Who is most likely to benefit from attending this course?
This is an introductory course that is aimed at PhD students and Early Career Researchers as well as other more experienced researchers in humanities and social sciences or working in industry who would like to expand their methodological toolkit to include digital methods.
Is there any preparatory work or pre-requisites?
This is an introductory course and does not require any previous digital methods knowledge or skills.
However there are various items that it would be useful for you to bring to the course:
- Smartphone (photo, video) and data transfer capabilities (USB-C, cloud storage) would be useful
- Laptop with QGIS installed (this is freely available here)
- Google login credentials would also be useful
If there are any issues with any of the above can you please contact methods@manchester well in advance of the course starting
You will be sent a very small amount of pre-reading to engage with prior to the course (e.g. a few journal articles) but if you would like to find out more about digital methods please access the range of additional resources suggested by the course team.
Course timetable
This in-person course will run from 1pm on 1st July to 12.30pm on 5th July 2024 (equivalent to four full days). It will include refreshment breaks on all days and lunches Tuesday-Thursday as well as a Summer School social activity on the Monday evening (information will be circulated to all attendees).
Please see below for an indicative timetable.
Costs
- Full price: £900
- PGR/reduced rate: £600
Book your place
Places should be booked through the Methods@Manchester e-store by clicking the button below (payment by card only).
Bursaries
We are pleased to be able to offer a limited number of bursaries for Summer School applicants eligible for reduced fees.
The main bursary scheme is limited to PGRs from the North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership, but we also have a very limited number of bursaries for other applicants eligible for reduced fees who are facing exceptional circumstances.
Please see the main Summer School website (bottom of the page) for details of these bursaries and information about how to apply.
Any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us on methods@manchester.ac.uk
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