Presentation at ECHIC 2018 https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/echic-2018/equip-engage Abstract: http://www.maxkemman.nl/2017/10/echic-abstract-infrastructure-as-afterthought/

1. Infrastructure As
Afterthought
@MaxKemman
www.maxkemman.nl
University of Luxembourg
ECHIC, 4-6 April 2018, Leuven, Belgium

2. Digital history
An ethnographic study of digital history
collaborations in the Benelux
Preliminary results for today:
Interviews
2 case studies (10 participants)
3 more projects for comparison (6 participants)

3. Rough structure of a collaboration
PI/Prof
Computational
researcher
Coordinator
Historians Technologists
EngineersPhDs

4. Infrastructures
“[D]igital humanities, where there is an urge to
work with large data sets and to create
accompanying infrastructures for them”
(Rogers 2013, p259)
“Infrastructure” here as the complex of:
• Connected datasets
• Data model
• Algorithms for analysis
• User interface

5. Gains of infrastructure work
Working on infrastructures has two main incentives
(Meyer & Schroeder 2015)
1. Attention for developed system
(Case 1, historian coordinator)
“During our launch event … people were honestly
enthusiastic, they saw also the applicability of the
software within their own organization, or to their
own questions of connecting datasets. So I was very
enthusiastic about that”
“The idea of the project has always been a proof-of-
concept … and … bring attention to our system that
we can try with them to get continued funding”

6. Gains of infrastructure work
Working on infrastructures has two main
incentives (Meyer & Schroeder 2015)
2. Development of expertise
(Case 2, historian PI)
“[Other projects will] profit from our investment,
the knowledge-building, the technical know-how,
that we have developed”

7. Incentives of participants
Do all project participants share the
ambitions of the project as developing
systems and technical expertise?

8. What is the historian working on?
(case 1, historian PI)
“What he must do is to write a thesis of 5 chapters that
are of [theoretical] value… And there he must just write
conventional stories, narratives. And at the same time he
uses digital means in his research.”
(case 1, computational linguist)
“[Y]ou go through a lot of trouble, manual effort and
thinking of how to organize this thing, and what kind of
labels you’re going to put and how you’re going to
structure it. This is not something that is completely
useless, it is also a valuable thing. But you have to tell
him that ... he doesn’t really realize that the digital part of
his research, is also research.”
(case 1, historian PhD)
“All that happens ultimately has the goal that I can do my
research better”

9. What is the technologist working on?
(case 1, computational linguist)
“[T]he project is basically building an interface
where all this information is presented in a ...
user-friendly way, in a good way. That would be
the success of the project. What I’m doing might
provide additional information to this interface
from the original text sources that are not yet
structured, that would be good, but it’s not ...
paramount for the success of the project.”

10. Discrepancy
Scholars are not necessarily concerned with the
infrastructure as thing
Infrastructure As Afterthought
What do we make of this?
• Do participants drift away from the project?
• Are projects not actually about infrastructure?
• Is the concept of “infrastructure” too narrow?

11. What is “infrastructure”
Alicia Martin

12. Infrastructure as process
Impossible to define the boundaries of
infrastructures (Karasti 2017, Larkin 2013, Star
& Ruhleder 1996)
• Separating not-yet-infrastructure from infrastructure
• Separating one infrastructure from another
• Separating infrastructure from person
In field of CSCW, attention towards
“infrastructure” not as noun but as verb
Infrastructuring

13. Infrastructuring
“Infrastructuring” captures the complex and
continuous process of development and use of
technology (Björgvinsson et al 2010)
• Design
• Coordination
• Development
• Appropriation
• Recontextualization

14. Infrastructuring in DH
• Design
• Infrastructure not yet in place
• Data model
• Coordination
• Collaboration of scholars and computational
researchers or developers
• Development
• Connecting (heterogeneous) datasets
• Tool or VRE
• Appropriation
• Ideally used also by other scholars
• Recontextualization

15. Recontextualization
DH projects can be driven by (Owens 2014)
• Research question
• Data collection
• Technology
Projects go back-and-forth on what the main drive is,
often end up at technology
Instead: constant recontextualization
RQ
TechnologyData

16. Conclusions
Scholars in DH collaborations are not necessarily
concerned with infrastructure as thing
Infrastructuring is a much broader sociotechnical
practice of aligning digital technology with (scholarly)
practices
Digital humanities is concerned with the alignment of
digital technology with scholarship (Kaltenbrunner 2015)
Not as afterthought, but as the very essence
Digital humanities as infrastructuring

17. Further questions
• Would “infrastructuring” work as a definition of DH?
• Does “infrastructuring” exclude practices
traditionally considered DH work, or include
practices traditionally not considered DH?
• Does infrastructuring necessarily lead to
infrastructures?
My PhD:
• How is infrastructuring in digital history
collaborations performed and experienced?
• What are the power roles during infrastructuring?
• Does infrastructuring lead to acculturation?

18. References
Antonijević, S. (2015). Amongst digital humanists: an ethnographic study of
digital knowledge production.
Björgvinsson, E., Ehn, P., & Hillgren, P.-A. (2010). Participatory design and
“democratizing innovation.” In Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory
Design Conference on - PDC ’10 (p. 41-50). New York, New York, USA: ACM
Press.
Kaltenbrunner, W. (2015). Reflexive inertia: reinventing scholarship through
digital practices. Leiden University.
Karasti, H., & Blomberg, J. (2017). Studying Infrastructuring Ethnographically.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work: CSCW: An International Journal, 1–33.
Larkin, B. (2013). The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 42(1), 327–343.
Meyer, E. T., & Schroeder, R. (2015). Knowledge Machines: Digital
Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities. (Ebook, Ed.). MIT Press.
Owens, T. (2014). Where to Start? On Research Questions in The Digital
Humanities. www.trevorowens.org
Rogers, R. (2013). Digital Methods. MIT Press.
Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure:
Design and Access for Large Information Spaces. Information Systems
Research, 7(1), 111–134.

19. Thank you for
listening
www.maxkemman.nl
@MaxKemman
max.kemman@uni.lu