Data and Protocols in the Digital Humanities

The Beginnings of a Sunrise © NASA / Jasmin Moghbeli

Contacts: Marion Maisonobe, Hugues Pecout and Ludovic Chalonge

The “Data and Protocols in Digital Humanities” transversality (DPHN) of the Géographie-cités laboratory aims to federate research that mobilizes emerging, heterogeneous, or massive data (notably data from mobile Information and Communication Technologies [ICT], the web, digitized ancient sources, large audiovisual corpora) to: measure socio-spatial dynamics; cross-reference and compare them with other sources; model, visualize, or critically analyze their uses. Meeting DPHN’s objective also involves federating programs using mixed methods; for example, by attempting to link large volumes of digital data (often noisy and “dry” but whose volume and frequency of collection make them interesting) to more qualitative data from interviews and fieldwork (richer, but costly and rare) and to institutional data of the census type.

DPHN proposes training courses to ensure the dissemination of practices, methods, and tools that enhance the necessary reproducibility of our research and promote open access. It encourages and supports the cataloguing of data used and produced in the unit’s research. The aim is to improve the visibility of the resources built up within the laboratory, by capitalizing on knowledge of the potential and limits of these data, and to promote open science.

At laboratory level, the team coordinates:
• study days
• in-house training in methods and tools
• assistance with open science practices