The recent increasing demand to quantify the efficiency of research output poses a challenge to subjects such as the humanities, which are arguably qualitative in nature. In this context, humanities research can greatly benefit from digital humanities approaches in communicating the significance of our scholarly output in quantitative terms. In this seminar, I will draw on my current research project, which focuses on the classification of Irish and Anglo-Irish literature, a classification that is often ambiguous and problematic. I will demonstrate how the use of digital tools can increase the efficiency of conducting this kind of research, and present the three types of digital humanities projects I have identified. Finally, I will discuss the possibility of reconsidering digital humanities as a practical tool for previously unthinkable projects, and how its application can potentially increase the fundability of projects, especially for early-career scholars.

Dr Jenny Kwok specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-Irish writers and intellectual history, particularly in relation to the tradition of liberal education and the post-World War I struggle between the humanities and the sciences. Dr Kwok was a Kilns Scholar in Residence of the C.S. Lewis Foundation and a recipient of the Werner Huber Fellowship of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL). She has previously published on the Anglo-Irish poet Seamus Heaney and his seminal work Station Island. As well as developing her dissertation into a monograph, she is working on publications on Irish literature as world literature and on applications of digital visualisation (in particular dispersion plot and VOS Viewer).

Zoom link: https://hku.zoom.us/j/92167490113?pwd=L1phUmZFRkR4Z1lwdU1JaEttOU45Zz09

Meeting ID: 921 6749 0113
Password: 889616