On this page
Digital Humanities Skills Workshop Series
The DH Skills workshop series is a partnership between the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL) and SFU Library’s Research Commons and is affiliated with the University of Victoria (ETCL, DHSI, and UVic Libraries) and the University of British Columbia (UBC Library and UBC Advanced Research Computing).
The workshops are free and open to to all, but registration is required. Links to register are included under each workshop description. Space is limited, so make sure to register soon to ensure a space.
Introduction to Spatial Data in Humanities: Exploring the spatial elements of your research
Many humanities researchers have some form of geographical information included in their research, such as objects, images, or texts from or about a particular place; narratives about a person’s movement or a place’s change over time; or information about networks of people or organizations. Whether places and spaces are at the heart of your research or are a part of it, mapping can help answer research questions and generate new ones by visualizing your data in new ways. It can help tell a story about place or space. This two-part workshop series will help humanities researchers map their place-based research with ArcGIS.
Exploring the spatial elements of your research
The first workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of getting started mapping with ArcGIS. We will discuss how to extract data from your research, get it ready for analysis, and upload it into ArcGIS.
Mapping the spatial elements of your research
The second workshop will cover spatial analysis - the potential applications of your geographic information. We will demonstrate the analytic functions included in ArcGIS and discuss how to create context for your spatial data. We will also introduce Story Maps, an app that helps turn place-based information into narratives with a combination of maps, images, and text. Note: for this workshop, we will assume that you have already attended the first workshop or are comfortable with the material covered there.
Upcoming Workshops
| Dates | Location |
|---|---|
| Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - 10:30am to 12:30pm | Burnaby, Bennett Library, Lab 2105 |
Introduction to Spatial Data in Humanities: Mapping the spatial elements of your research
Many humanities researchers have some form of geographical information included in their research, such as objects, images, or texts from or about a particular place; narratives about a person’s movement or a place’s change over time; or information about networks of people or organizations. Whether places and spaces are at the heart of your research or are a part of it, mapping can help answer research questions and generate new ones by visualizing your data in new ways. It can help tell a story about place or space. This two-part workshop series will help humanities researchers map their place-based research with ArcGIS.
Exploring the spatial elements of your research
The first workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of getting started mapping with ArcGIS. We will discuss how to extract data from your research, get it ready for analysis, and upload it into ArcGIS.
Mapping the spatial elements of your research
The second workshop will cover spatial analysis - the potential applications of your geographic information. We will demonstrate the analytic functions included in ArcGIS and discuss how to create context for your spatial data. We will also introduce Story Maps, an app that helps turn place-based information into narratives with a combination of maps, images, and text. Note: for this workshop, we will assume that you have already attended the first workshop or are comfortable with the material covered there.
Upcoming Workshops
| Dates | Location |
|---|---|
| Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - 10:30am to 12:30pm | Burnaby, Bennett Library, Lab 2105 |
Optimizing Your Digital Research Workflow with Zotero
Are you overwhelmed by notes on secondary sources? Have you just downloaded a PDF of an article for the eighteenth time? Are you sick of trying to pull together a bibliography at the last minute? Use the summer to get your research materials under control and streamline the writing process! In this two-hour workshop, we’ll cover the basics of Zotero, an open-source reference management software system, as well as some strategies for incorporating it into your research and writing workflow.
Upcoming Workshops
Next semester's workshops will be posted soon.Digital Humanities Discussion Series @Us
You have a great set of research objects that you want to share publicly - but should you? You think it’s important to help your students share their work and engage in public conversations - but when should they be cautious? You want to share your research and your teaching practices on social media - but what about trolls?
While digital tools are helping researchers and teachers to share their work in unprecedented ways, they also raise questions about how to use them in ways that are ethical, productive, and safe.
@Us is a series of discussions that will take up these questions and more, offering participants a chance to think through issues, ask their own questions, share ideas and experiences, and get practical advice. We will suggest some optional readings to give participants some background for each topic. We will hold our discussion group at the Burnaby campus, on the first Thursday of every month, 1:30-2:30pm, through the Summer 2018 term. Coffee and light refreshments served.
Our next discussion topic is "Feminism and the Digital Humanities."
We will talk about why feminist thinking is crucial to the field of Digital Humanities, touching on the importance of feminist critique and the ways feminist principals can be applied and practiced in the field. We'll also look to examples of feminist digital pedagogy and digital projects that are recuperating women's history and writing.
Date & Time: 5 July 2018 1:30-2:30pm
Location: Bennett Library, Rm 724
Optional Readings:
1. "Embracing 'Situated Knowledges': How To Do Feminist DH," by Cayla D. Eagon. https://dhtoph.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/embracing-situated-knowledges-how-to-do-feminist-dh/
2. The FemTechNet Manifesto. http://femtechnet.org/publications/manifesto/
3. "Putting the Human Back in the Digital Humanities: Feminism, Generosity, and Mess," by Elizabeth Losh, Jacqueline Wernimont, Laura Wexler, and Hong-An Wu. In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, U of Minnesota Press, 2016. (If you cannot access this book chapter, please contact dhil@sfu.ca).
Tableau Study Group
Tableau is a widely used data analytics and visualization tool. Thanks to an easy to use drag-and-drop interface, it makes it easy to sort, compare, and analyze data from multiple sources, including Excel, SQL Server, and cloud-based data repositories. However, Tableau is also a rather complex piece of software, with numerous functionalities and options. At first, it might look intimidating to people without previous data analytics and visualization skills.
This study group aims at helping beginners in approaching Tableau and exploring its potentialities. It is open to everyone who has never used Tableau, or is already using it and wants to explore it beyond the basic functionalities.
Throughout the program, we will cover the following topics:
1. Data Connections
2. Organizing & Simplifying Data
3. Field & Chart Types
4. Calculations
5. Mapping
6. Dashboards
If you would like to participate, please contact dhil@sfu.ca
Digital Humanities Café
The DH Café presents a series of short workshops and informal discussion on topics relevant to the basic theories and methods behind digital research in the humanities. The courses cover a broad range of topics, from larger issues in digital research in the academy to specific tools and research techniques. The theme for Spring 2018 is How Do You Put the Digital in a Humanities Project?.
The workshops are free and open to to all, but registration is required. Links to register are included under each workshop description. Space is limited, so make sure to register soon to ensure a space.
The DH Café is a partnership between the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL) and SFU Library's Research Commons and is affiliated with KEY, SFU's Big Data Initiative.
The DH Café is on summer hiatus. but please consider joining our @Us Discussion group. Check back in the fall for new DH Café offerings!
Past workshops
- Intro to Preparing Character Data in R (Summer 2017)
- Digital Pedagogy at Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada conference (Spring 2017)
- Digital Storytelling using Twine (Spring 2017)
- Intermediate Podcasting (Spring 2017)
- Spatial Humanities (Fall 2016)
- Tableau for Humanists (Fall 2016)
- Podcasting for Scholarly Communication (Fall 2016)