Press release: Digital Scholarship @ Oxford launches

The University of Oxford has launched a new initiative aimed at transforming the application of digital technology to the Humanities. Digital Scholarship @ Oxford (DiSc) is a 5-year project based jointly in the Humanities Division and the Bodleian Libraries and funded by £2.4 million from the University’s Strategic Research Fund. The project will be publicly inaugurated by Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, on 15 November 2021.

As DiSc’s new Academic Director, Professor Howard Hotson, explains, ‘DiSc will accelerate the growth of digital initiatives across and beyond the Humanities Division by showing how they can learn from, interact with, and support one another.’ This goal will be pursued by providing a single point of contact for this field, a stable core of technical expertise, convergent standards, tools, and platforms, a public showcase and events programme, and a series of targeted research fellowships. Another crucial component is Oxford’s first-ever degree course in this field: a new one-year Master of Science degree in Digital Scholarship, now accepting applications for students in the 2022-23 academic year. The Director of this new MSc, Dr Sarah Oglivie, adds: “This new Master's degree will enable students to participate in some of Oxford's flagship digital projects, and to learn cutting-edge digital tools and methods that will serve their scholarship in new ways.”

Oxford’s digitally-enhanced research in the Humanities is long-standing and world-leading, with projects ranging from digitising the oldest written cuneiform tablets to transforming the works of Shakespeare into AI-powered chatbots. During the last two years, the CoViD-19 pandemic has reinforced still further the importance of digital resources and skills across the academic world.

In Oxford, these projects and resources have emerged independently of one another in many different settings: across all the Faculties of the Humanities Division, across the other three Divisions of the University as well, within the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford’s museums, and also within the Oxford University Press. The core mission of Digital Scholarship @ Oxford is to bring these rich individual assets into mutually supportive relationships with one another. While doing so, DiSc will also render these resources more sustainable by sharing digital technologies and digital platforms, promote best practice including open access, and help train and educate the next generation of practitioners in this rapidly emerging field. In support of this aim, the new MSc in Digital Scholarship is now open to applications for study in the academic year 2022-23.

DiSc’s launch will be marked with an event in the Bodleian’s Weston Library on 15 November 2021, with remarks from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, DiSc’s newly appointed Academic, Director Professor Howard Hotson, and a keynote presentation by Dr Marieke van Erp, Leader of the Digital Humanities Research Lab at KNAW Humanities Cluster in Amsterdam.

Digital Scholarship @ Oxford’s ultimate goal is to help place the huge range of digital assets and initiatives in Oxford on an increasingly coherent, mutually supportive, and sustainable footing. After years of preliminary discussions and planning, DiSc has been funded for five years (January 2021-December 2025) from the University of Oxford’s Strategic Research Fund. During this period, DiSc will deliver the following goals:

Collaboration and convergence

DiSc’s ultimate goal is to help place the huge range of digital assets and initiatives in Oxford on an increasingly coherent, mutually supportive, convergent, and sustainable footing. This will involve systematically exploring opportunities for collaboration between partners in and outside the Humanities Division; creating a stable team of experts in digital project design and development available for consultations and collaboration on projects in and building infrastructure to support multiple research projects, beginning with the Sustainable Digital Scholarship Service.

Capacity-building

DiSc will invest in the future of digital scholarship by helping to assemble and support a rich range of teaching and training options for all levels of the university community. A new MSc in Digital Scholarship will build on the success of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School and complement training options provided by IT Services, Bodleian Libraries, and elsewhere. DiSc will also help catalyse new research through funded research calls and visiting fellowships.

Community-building

DiSc will provide a unitary point of access, outreach, and engagement, enabling anyone interested in digital scholarship to find, communicate, and join forces with others in the field at the University of Oxford and beyond. This will be achieved by supporting academic and public events, nurturing strategic relationships, and showcasing projects nationally and internationally through a website, twice-termly newsletter, social media channels, and presentations.

The Humanities/Bodleian Library programme Digital Scholarship (DiSc) @ Oxford will firmly establish Oxford University at the cutting edge of collaborative researcher-led digital scholarship.
DiSC will become a hub of expertise in digital scholarship, led by an academic director and a new team of software developers with additional input from world-leading researchers on visiting fellowships.
The initiative is funded by £2.4 million from the University’s Strategic Research Fund. In a virtuous circle, this fund reinvests revenues from the University’s research and development activity including spin-out companies and commercial licenses.
DiSc is genuinely inter-disciplinary, spanning the University’s academic Divisions and Collections, and aims to ensure that digital outputs and collections are sustainable for the long-term.
The initiative will boost education in digital research methods at every level, from a new MSc in Digital Scholarship to digital training for academics.

Press release: Digital Scholarship @ Oxford launches

Oxford University announces the creation of a new initiative to transform digital research in the Humanities

Why now?

What is DiSc?

Key messages

Information for Editors

Professor Howard Hotson

Dr Sarah Ogilvie