Call for Proposals

Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries calls for submissions for its 2018 conference in Helsinki, Finland, 7–9 March 2018.

In 2018, the conference seeks to extend the scope of digital humanities research covered, both into new areas, as well as beyond the Nordic and Baltic countries. In pursuit of this, in addition to the abstracts familiar from humanities traditions, we also adopt a call for publication ready texts as is the tradition in computer science conferences. Therefore, we accept the following types of submissions:

  1. Publication ready texts of length appropriate to the topic. Accepted papers will be submitted to the CEUR-WS proceedings series for publication in a citable form. Layout for the papers is not absolutely mandated, but we suggest you use the Springer LNCS templates to ensure a uniform look for the proceedings.
    1. Long paper: 8-12 pages, presented in 20 min plus 10 min for Q&A
    2. Short paper: 4-8 pages, presented in 10 min plus 5 min for Q&A
    3. Poster/demo: 2-4 pages, presented as an A1 academic poster in a poster exhibition.
  2. Abstracts of a maximum of 2000 words. Proposals are expected to indicate a preference between a) long, b) short, or c) poster/demo format for presentation. Approved abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts on the conference website.

Submissions to the conference are now closed. In total, we received 170 submissions, a 70% increase from last year! More detailed statistics of the submissions are available here.

Important dates

The call for proposals opened on 28 August 2017, and the final deadline for submitting proposals was 5 November 2017 (extended from 25 October 2017). Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 8 January 2018. For accepted papers, there is an additional deadline of 5 February 2018 for producing a final version of your paper that takes into account the comments made by the reviewers.

This year, the conference welcomes in particular work related to the following themes:

History

While the number of researchers describing themselves as digital historians is increasing, computational approaches to history have rarely captured the attention of those without innate interest in digital humanities. To address this, we particularly invite presentations of historical research whose use of digital methods advances the overall methodological basis of the field.

Cultural Heritage

Libraries, galleries, archives and museums are making vast amounts of cultural heritage openly digitally available. However, tapping into these resources for research requires cultivating co-operation and trust between scholars and heritage institutions, due to the cultural, institutional, legal and technical boundaries crossed. We invite proposals describing such co-operation – examples of great resources for cultural heritage scholarship, of problems solved using such data, as well as e.g. intellectual property rights issues.

Games

Humanities perspectives on games are an established part of the game studies community. Yet their relationship with digital humanities remains undefined. Digitality and games, digital methods and games, games as digital methods, and so on are all areas available for research. We invite proposals that address high-level game concepts like “fun”, “immersion”, “design”, “interactivity”, etc positioned as points of contact with the digital.

Future

We also invite proposals in the broad category of ”Future”. Accepted proposals will still fit in the overall context of the conference and highlight new perspectives to the digital humanities. Submissions may range from applications of data science to humanities research to work on human-machine interaction and ecological digital humanities. We also welcome reflections on the future of the digital humanities, as well as the societal impact of the humanities.

Finally, the overarching theme this year is Open Science. This pragmatic concept emphasises the role of transparent and reproducible research practices, open dissemination of results, and new forms of collaboration, all greatly facilitated by digitalisation. All proposals are invited to reflect on the benefits, challenges, and prospects of open science for their own research.

Call for workshops/panels and tutorials

In addition to individual papers, the conference calls for interested parties to submit proposals for workshops/panels and tutorial sessions to be held preceding the conference. Workshops/panels gather together participants around a particular subtopic, while tutorials present a useful tool or method of interest to the digital humanities community. Either can take the form of either a half or a full day session, and they generally take place the day prior to the conference.

Proposals should include the session format, title, and a short description of its topic (max 2000 words) as well as the contact information of the person/s responsible. Proposals should also include the following: intended audience, approximate number of participants, and any special technical requirements.

Submissions of workshops/panels to the conference are now closed.

Programme committee

  • Eetu Mäkelä, University of Helsinki (chair)
  • Jenny Bergenmar, University of Gothenburg
  • Olga Holownia, British Library
  • Leo Lahti, University of Turku
  • Bente Maegaard, University of Copenhagen
  • Asko Nivala, University of Turku
  • Christian-Emil Smith Ore, University of Oslo
  • Sanita Reinsone, University of Latvia
  • Annika Rockenberger, University of Oslo
  • Tanja Säily, University of Helsinki
  • Kaius Sinnemäki, University of Helsinki
  • Jukka Suomela, Aalto University
  • Mikko Tolonen, University of Helsinki