Leveraging Scale and Opportunity: Digital HASS in Australasia

Presented at the 2024 eResearch Australasia Conference, Melbourne
Thursday 31st October 2024 13:40-14:00
Lake Room 1-2
Theme: Digital HASS

Digital humanities (DH) and digital social science (DSS) have become increasingly difficult to distinguish, suggesting the emergence of a new mode of ‘Digital HASS’. The growth of machine learning and generative AI will accelerate this process, enabling less technical users and requiring increasingly large-scale research platforms. There are more prosaic drivers too, however. Analysis of social media, web archives, and nineteenth century newspapers requires similar infrastructure and methods, and can be supported by research software engineers (RSEs) with much the same spectrum of skills. There is no reason to isolate technical teams and duplicate research infrastructures (RI) when they can support a wide range of HASS activity. Even the more creative end of the HASS spectrum, from gaming to virtual cultural heritage, can be delivered from an experienced RSE team with a broad set of skills. Important differences will always exist at higher levels in the RSE ‘stack’, requiring substantial domain expertise, but the enabling infrastructures, investments, operational processes, and research methods look largely the same.

This talk will outline some initiatives in Digital HASS, from Edinburgh and California to a new initiative in Canberra, outlining technical and human requirements, and opportunities for cross-disciplinary and cross-sector research. Particular attention will be placed on opportunities to develop Digital HASS across Australasia, leveraging our funding environments and the traditional openness of our eResearch community to HASS research. The goal must be to think at national, transnational, and international scale, defining a recognisably Australasian approach to Digital HASS that reflects our local context.