HDH2017

The development of computational technologies and the expansion of the digital medium have led to important social, political, cultural and epistemological transformations. Digital Humanities, as a field of research, critical reflection and action, have become one of the key pillars in this process, contributing to the advance of digital culture as well as to its critical analysis. Thus, the practice of Digital Humanities helps us expand the new ways of production and distribution of knowledge, culture, social actions, political discourses, etc., which are building the new 21th-century societies, but, at the same time, also helps us be aware of their underlying imbalances and uncertainties.

The III International Conference of the HDH wants to focus on the crucial role played by Digital Humanities, addressing three critical dimensions: societies, politics and knowledge. The main question posed by the HDH2017 is: how are the Digital Humanities contributing – or might contribute – to the transformation of these dimensions in the diversity of the territorial and cultural contexts where the Digital Humanities are developed?

Within this framework question, others emerge:

Which is the impact and social projection of the Digital Humanities? How do the Digital Humanities help us to reconfigure the socio-cultural spaces, global-local dialects, territorial and cultural diversity?  How might they collaborate to the economic revitalization of the territories? How might they contribute to the challenge of building a more rebalanced, inclusive, tolerant and open world?

Where does its political dimension lie? What is or should be their involvement in the convulsive political time in which we live? What kind of political construction are Digital Humanities in themselves? What are the policies that underpin its current development and expansion?

We know that the Digital Humanities question the parameters that have been defined so far the traditional academic system, but what is the real degree of transformation? Are the Digital Humanities developing a really new knowledge? What are their methodological innovations, beyond the application of certain technologies? How do they interconnect and hybridize the diversity of knowledge that constitutes our world? If the inherent interdisciplinarity of the Digital Humanities surpasses the traditional concept of “areas of knowledge” inherited from modernity, which are now the new frontiers of the knowledge production processes?

Finally, might the hybrid space that the Digital Humanities contribute to create be a new territory of freedom, that enable human beings to experiment and create in the search of a better world?

The HDH2017 invites to present proposals that deepen these questions, or others related to the theme of the conference, from the four dimensions that constitute the fundamental core of Digital Humanities: critical reflection, scholarly research, innovative educational practices and activism.

This conference also wants to pay special attention to the creative forms of digital culture as spaces for reflection, research and action. Proposals dealing with the ways in which new media, digital literatures and arts contribute to the development and to the critical reflection on the digital culture will be particularly welcome.

The Digital Humanities, broadly defined as a space of disciplinary convergences, requires the participation and involvement of multiple fields of knowledge. Therefore, the HDH wants to promote dialogue, debate and exchange of ideas in this conference, inviting researchers, professionals and students from different fields working in the thematic areas that comprise the Digital Humanities to present their proposals, so that we can explore together innovative and creative lines of action.