Workshop: Networks over space and time: modelling, analyzing, and representing complex data in the digital humanities

More info (programme – travel grants)

This workshop is about interconnections between, and in space and time. But it also sees interconnections at other levels: between modelling and analysing, between theory and practice, as well as between humanities and computing.

In the humanities, a close look at networks and relationships, whether formal or informal, personal or social, of information or of knowledge, of transportation or of communication, has always been an important subject of study and, at the same time, a powerful analytical process. In computer science, the study of networks and of methodologies for analysis and visualization of these relationships is nowadays an increasingly well understood and practiced area of knowledge. In both the humanities and computer science, researchers are well aware of the dynamic nature of data and knowledge when viewed through the lenses of space and time.

Networks can be studied in a purely spatial perspective, if the object of analysis is the distance between things or people. However, there are two other dimensions which render networks’ study in a more complex and richer methodology. Either time or social relationships help to extend the focus of analysis from distance to connectivity, and this is an important concept for the Humanities, as it is for the Social Sciences, at least, since the 1930’s . In the field of spatial analysis, the focus has also tended to shift from an almost exclusively quantitative approach , to one that tries to develop a new ontological and epistemological view, combining quantitative with qualitative methods and sources , a view also important for the humanists. When put together, time, spatial analysis, with its derivative, spatial network analysis, and social network analysis, can be a powerful way of thinking about the world (theory) and of explaining it (methodology). And at the present time, with the integration and plasticity of the digital, the rising awareness about geography and time trough the Internet’s social networks, and the growing usability of the Web 2.0, thinking and explaining networks can benefit from powerful tools, increasingly complex and accessible at the same time.

The aim of this workshop is to combine analytical perspectives in the study of networks, over space and time, in humanities disciplines and on various themes, to identify methodologies, discuss research results, and encourage interdisciplinary approaches. The main focus of this workshop will be the areas of modelling and representation, highlighting them more as methods of analysis and knowledge production than merely as tools.

The perceived outcomes of this workshop will be to document the case studies presented, discuss and share methods and research results arising from these and to identify in the form of a report the interconnection between the humanities and the digital, helping to define a taxonomy of new methodologies and the development of a community of researchers for future collaborative work.