In three recent projects I have explored how digital methods may not only function to reinscribe archival and collection dynamics like bias, absence and loss in new digital contexts but also how they may to reactivate those dynamics in our interlinked and apparently ever more powerful digital environments. This talk will reflect both on the emistemological challenges that arise at the intersection of critical heritage, oral history and digital history, and the ways that digital methods may, as part of a wider mixed-methods methodological bundle, seek to contest, remake and reimagine absence. More specifically, this talk will explore 3 recently completed or ongoing projects, namely: the Towards a National Collection-funded "The Sloane Lab: looking back to build future shared collections", of which I am PI; my recent book  Nyhan, Julianne. Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities: On the Index Thomisticus Project 1965-67. Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities. New York: Routledge, 2022; and, together with Dr Andrew Flinn (UCL), our ongoing work towards a new Oral History paradigm, called "Multimodal Digital Oral History (MDOH)"

Bio

Prof. Dr.  Julianne Nyhan is Chair of Humanities Data Science and Methodology, TU Darmstadt and and Managing Director of the Institute of History, TU Darmstadt, Germany. She remains a part-time Professor of Digital Humanities, UCL, UK, where she leads the Arts and Humanities Research Council Towards a National Collection-funded “The Sloane Lab: looking back to build future shared collections”. She has published widely, especially the history of digital humanities and oral history and she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UK. Her most recent book is: Nyhan, Julianne. Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities: On the Index Thomisticus Project 1965-67. Routledge, 2023. Together with Dr Andrew Flinn and Dr Andreas Vlachidis, she has recently been awarded funding for the AHRC-DFG bilateral project (2024-27): “Mixed-methods Digital Oral History: enfolding semantic web technologies and historical-interpretative analysis to better understand narratives of formation, disruption and change in the history of computing in the Humanities”