Submitted Abstract
The DH Benelux conference acts as a platform for collaboration, connecting international researchers in the field of Digital Humanities from the Benelux region together with researchers from the European Union and beyond. The conference has a broad disciplinary range, from a diverse array of research projects. It is targeted a building a community that bridges the gap between early career researchers and eminent academic scholars. The conference host rotates between Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg and in 2016 was the turn of Luxembourg to host, co-hosted by the CVCE and the University of Luxembourg, which will further help to position Luxembourg as a centre for excellence in this discipline.The DH Benelux conference has a unique perspective. It aims to (a) shine a spotlight on research excellence in the Benelux region while welcoming researchers from Europe and beyond, (b) develop a critical mass of researchers and foster collaboration at all career stages, (c) provides a platform for contributing to and publishing digital humanities research, (d) nurtures an interdisciplinary forum for discussing and stimulating digital humanities research ideas, (e) creates an environment to test early research finding and obtain domain expert feedback and (f) provide a framework for young researcher to embed their work in a regional and international context.The draft programme is expected to include paper sessions with parallel tracks grouped together by topics and themes. The first theme proposed will focus on critique and discourse within the digital humanities with a view to shaping future research practices and best practice scholarship in order to enable a theoretical lens for the discipline. The second theme proposed focuses on the further development of analytical methods and visualisation practices that facilitate either data visualisation of results or exploration analysis for critical hypothesis development (take for example topic modelling or social network graph based analysis). The third theme considers digital transformation with respect to how big humanities data are accessed and reused with the fourth and final theme exploring human factors and user research in digital humanities research. The conference will include a theme based lunch called the “the Big DH conversation”. Whereby different tables will be assigned a particular theme or set of questions for which participants can join in the discussion. A nominated scribe will collect the main discussion points and this will feed into the panel summary of the conference on the second day. A poster reception will be held prior to the conference dinner where researchers can present their results in an informal setting. Application demonstrations will be conducted during lunch on the second day to showcase excellent digital humanities projects, their software, tools and research outcomes. The purpose of which is to aid networking amongst different domain specialists and identify potential future collaborations. Keynote speakers have not yet been selected – Invites will be sent during July/August 2015. The local organising committee is currently collecting a list of suitable candidates. We are plan to invite a keynote with a truly interdisciplinary and cross-subject background that can enlighten on the perspectives of leading research where experts share different expertise and perspectives to develop new innovations. With the digital humanities discipline being at the intersection of a number of disciplines, this brings many challenges and benefits, an eminent keynote speaker from outside the discipline would bring new insights and a fresh perspective to our discipline.