Digitalised Humanities: Interdisciplinary Research Projects Receive State Funding

The researchers are developing a virtual research space for digital libraries, which will allow the computer-aided analysis of the relationship between text and image. The principle behind the project is that the discourse of modernity has been characterised by an increasing interplay between text and image since the end of the 19th century. 

The approved project is based in the field of »Digital Humanities«. The digital humanities have been considered an exemplary interdisciplinary field for the past few years. They closely connect humanities disciplines, such as linguistics or history, with technical and natural sciences, for instance computer science or information science. The resulting potential for interdisciplinary cooperation between individual humanities disciplines, such as literary studies, art history and media studies, however, is still largely untapped. 

This potential is to be fully tapped into in the Faculty of Media at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar: A virtual research space titled »Text-Bild-Gefüge. Digital Humanities und der Diskurs der Moderne« is being developed, closely connecting text and image-based topics and techniques. »The project is based on Foucault’s theory of discourse analysis and the subsequent developments and processes for analysing image discourse and rhetoric«, explains project leader Prof. Dr. Henning Schmidgen. The research space will provide access to a digital body of historical print sources containing both text and images. The starting point for the project are late 19th century scientific journals, for instance »Zeitschrift für Sinnesphysiologie« and »Philosophische Studien«. Through the help of flexible and adaptable information extraction procedures as well as text and image analysis technology, the digital body is systematically indexed.  

The TMWWDG’s »Förderung der Forschung« (research promotion) guidelines, which will be funding the project beginning next year, supports and sustainable expands research initiatives at Thuringian universities and research institutions. Through funding for the »Text-Bild-Gefüge. Digital Humanities und der Diskurs der Moderne«, a project in the humanities is being funded alongside traditional STEM projects.

Further information can be found on theory of Media Worlds website as well as the Computational Humanities website.

For further information, please contact scientific staff member Franziska Klemstein:

Franziska Klemstein, M.A.Scientific staff member for the Digital HumanitiesBauhausstraße 1199423 WeimarE-mail: franziska.klemstein[at]uni-weimar.de