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Digital Methods in the Humanities: Lecture by Peter Cornwell
"The Rhetorics and Pragmatics of Digital Methods in the Humanities" was the title of a lecture by Prof. Dr. Peter Cornwell (University of Westminster). He spoke on November 24 at 6 pm at the Department of History of the University of Basel. The event was organised by the Basel Graduate School of History in collaboration with the Institute for Media Science and the Institute for European Global Studies.
In his lecture, Cornwell presented new developments in the automated transformation of research data. This transformation needs to take place in order to comply with multiple and evolving standards. Specifically, he talked about a collaboration between Heidelberg, Lyon, Princeton and Westminster universities and the commercial sector which has produced substantial results: Its strategy rejects the notion of conclusive representation of research data and instead focuses on effective tools for long-term migration. This approach allows researchers to use current versions of metadata standards without becoming locked in untenable maintenance costs as standards evolve. This is particularly important for annotation metadata, where standards are still being developed. Cornwell used several research projects to illustrate these developments, including one on Tajik anthropology and early audio communication, in which preservation and presentation as well as long-term accessibility of metadata are important goals.
Prof Dr. Peter Cornwell is a British computer scientist and media theorist. He is Director of the Data Futures project and professor in the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster. He served as an expert for the EU's first Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT) work-program, and on numerous U.K. strategy committees. Furthermore, as director of the Institute of Visual Media at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology, he founded its Center for Digital Heritage. Cornwell also was manager of European R&D for Texas Instruments, Inc. and founder and CEO of California IPO Division Inc.
The lecture "The Rhetorics and Pragmatics of Digital Methods in the Humanities" by Prof. Dr. Peter Cornwell took place on November 24 at 6 pm. in Seminar room 1 in the Department of History, Hirschgässlein 21, 4051 Basel. Prof. Dr. Markus Krajewski (University of Basel) served as discussant and Prof. Dr. Martin Lengwiler (University of Basel) chaired the event. The event was organised by the Basel Graduate School of History in collaboration with the Institute for Media Science and the Institute for European Global Studies.
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