Research
The junior professorship in Digital Humanities represents a new interdisciplinary connection between the humanities and computer science. Highlighting the digital humanities as an emerging epistemic culture with its own theoretical and praxeological framework, the junior professorship explores the transformative potential of current technical methods. In doing so, the junior professorship not only examines the specific characteristics of knowledge production. Rather, the junior professorship also re-evaluates the role of the humanities as a discipline of reflection.
A specific research focus of the junior professorship is to shed light on the unique synergies that result from the integration of data analysis and algorithmic systems with humanistic practices such as interpretation and criticism. The aim is to foster the development and dissemination of critical practices and reflective descriptive categories that are relevant to the design of a sustainable digital society.
The junior professorship is dedicated to the principles of knowledge production in the humanities. The research focuses in particular on models, forms and practices of theory in the humanities under (post-)digital paradigms. In interdisciplinary studies, the junior professorship investigates the links between discursive models of knowledge, statistical probability, and algorithmic systems in the digital humanities. The analysis and application of artificial intelligence is seen as a central aspect in understanding possible shifts in humanities knowledge.
Expanding the repertoire of methods to include statistical procedures and machine learning is often highlighted as a goal in the digital humanities. The junior professorship is dedicated to the import of mixed methods and other multi-method constellations as a representative model of knowledge production in the digital humanities.
In the digital humanities, the traditional objects and structures of discursive knowledge are joined by new material embodiments of knowledge. Software and code not only represent specific textual forms of knowledge in the digital humanities that manifest themselves in concrete infrastructural settings. Rather, they can also be described as tools for the development of socio-technical systems by integrating and managing different modes of communication. Basic research into the functioning and implications of software and code is essential for the design of human-machine interactions.
