1. AHRC Digital Transformations
Strategic Theme: The Story So
Far
Andrew Prescott, Theme Leader Fellow

2. Role of Theme Fellow
• Not programme director: providing scholarly input to enhance
transformative quality of work funded under theme
• Building links between projects and encouraging synergy
between them
• Ensuring wider academic and public awareness of work
undertaken in theme
• Building links with other themes and theme fellows
• Organising seminars, workshops and other events which will help
achieve aspirations of theme
• Developing online presence of theme
• http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News-and-Events/Watch-and-
Listen/Pages/AHRC-Digital-Transformations-Podcast.aspx

3. Not a Programme or a Project but a Partnership
• A number of partners in developing theme
• Theme Advisory Group
• Theme Fellow
• AHRC team
• Previous and existing grant holders
• One of the outcomes of the theme should be an active
and well-integrated community whose continuing work
will reflect the vision of the theme

4. Hacking the
Teapot with MzTek
at the Moot, Nov.
2012 (Photo:
Johnny Grieg)
Digital Transformations
Moot
• Hands on and practical
approach, but with strong
theoretical and practical
engagement
• Potential for greater
dialogue and cross-over
between practice-based
research and more
traditional humanities
research
• Continued development
of dialogue between
academic researchers,
GLAM, industry, SMEs

5. Digital Transformations Theme:
Characteristics
• Pluralistic: no one approach or solution; encouraging experimentation
• But nevertheless seeking to ensure links and cross-fertilisation across
projects
• The programme is research-driven: produces research which is
inspiring and transformative – not primarily concerned with
infrastructure, standards, integrated tools, etc.
• Projects creating strong links between the arts and humanities, and
also seeking out new cross-disciplinary alliances and forms of
collaboration
• Wow factor: but how do we link that to high-quality research?
• Links with other themes and programmes (Translating Cultures;
Science in Culture; Care for the Future; Digital Economy; Connected
Communities)

6. Digital Transformations Theme
Funding Calls to Date
• Highlights for research networks and fellowships from 2011-13
• Exploratory Grants, 2012, across whole range of theme
• Large grant awards for ‘beacon’ projects, 2013: Digital
Panopticon; Fragmented Heritage; Transforming Musicology
• Big Data Capital Funding Programme, Co-Creation Awards (with
Connected Communities programme), 2013
• Big Data Awards, 2014
• Amplification Awards, 2014
• Small grants shortly to be announced
• Future of the Academic Book (with The British Library), 2014

7. www.digitalpanopticon.org
• the impact of the different types of penal punishments
on the lives of 66,000 people sentenced at The Old
Bailey between 1780 and 1875
• transferable methods for understanding and exploiting
complex bodies of genealogical, biometric, and
administrative data (eg linking, visualisation)
• addressing major issues with contemporary policy
significance

8. www.fragmentedheritage.com
• using crowdsourcing techniques to enable surveys of
large-scale archaeological sites of significance in early
history of human evolution
• development of technique for automated refitting of
images of archaeological fragments
• experimenting with new technologies eg high
resolution aerial imagery

9. http://www.transforming-musicology.org
• how emerging technologies for working with music as
sound and score can transform musicology
• portfolio of projects ranging from lute music to Wagner
• exploring how musical communities on the Web
engage with their music by employing Music
Information Retrieval tools in developing a social
platform for furthering musical discussion online.

10. Building the Story
• How do we find overarching narratives
for projects whose subject matter range
from neolithic flint tools to modern
weather data? Inevitably, part of the
answer is looking at methods, but there
are also more substantive issues
beginning to emerge.
• What follows are a few extremely
tentative suggestions.

11. The Rhetoric of
Transformation and Innovation
• ‘Digital transformations’ more integrated into AHRC
strategy than previous programmes
• But term refers to (and misinterprets) the ‘disruptive’
models of Christensen
• The process of innovation is frequently a continuum of
incremental development (Steve Jobs as ‘tinkerer’):
particularly true in arts and humanities
• What is the relationship of projects to the digital /
knowledge economy?
• Successive attempts to promote AHRC involvement
with digital programmes have relied on rhetoric of
innovation: do we need to develop fresh arguments (eg
Dig Panopticon’s policy questions)

12. Scaling and Interrogating Data
• Different projects use macro and micro approaches
to data, from a single weather datum to data for
entire populations
• Critical approaches to data, contextualising its
function, use and deceptions
• Issues around use of ‘black boxes’ in scaling up
scholarly use of data through linking, visualising, etc.:
how does scholarly interrogation occur?
• ‘Open data is the new oil’ (Rt Hon Francis Maude,
2012): our projects explore the implications of that
remark, emphasising the deceptions of data and
dangers of datafication, while demonstrating how
scholars can make creative and critical use of data

13. Digital Materialities
• Notwithstanding anxieties about quantification in arts
and humanities, use of visualisation makes research
increasingly an interactive and aesthetic experience,
and design is key component
• At beginning of theme, data seemed increasingly
evanescent and quicksilver-like. But the digital
continuum is a constantly surprising one, and
methods of exploring the materiality of data have
become increasingly prominent as the theme has
developed
• Examples: creation of ‘data objects’; Tangible
Memories; printing of archaeological artefacts;
conductive inks
• Implications for future humanities research?

14. Re-Collecting
• 1990s cry was ‘Access not Collections’ and access
has been another hardy perennial of digital rhetoric
• Theme sought to move beyond digitisation.
Consequently, strong emphasis on building
collections, shifting their boundaries and remediating
them
• Creating new collections: recording historic and
cultural material, collecting data created by
individuals
• Placing collections in new media and contexts
(internet of things)
• Reflecting on the nature of existing collections and
archives

15. Communities and Audiences
• Fragmentation of landscape between libraries,
archives, museums; IT professionals; DH centres;
academic researchers. Projects do show
improvement in dialogue between these groups
• But how does this continue to move forward, and how
do we keep links alive as interest in area grows?
• Strong engagement with external communities: family
historians, crowdsourcing, community groups in co-creation
projects
• Not simply about expanding reach and impact of
research. Co-creation projects are particularly
notable in ways they generate new forms of scholarly
communication and output. It may be this
engagement which is the truly transformative element

16. After the Theme
• Coming towards end of funding; focus on
developing the story
• Need to build dialogue between practice-based
research in arts and more conventional
humanities research
• But are we moving beyond the digital?
• Materiality
• Will we focus more on bioscience and
nanotechnology within a few years?
• Industry 4.0