What Are the Digital Humanities?

When humanist scholars use digital and computational approaches to advance their research and public outreach, they are participating in the digital humanities (DH). DH methods include text analysis, image analysis, geospatial analysis with GIS tools, cultural heritage representations using augmented and virtual reality tools.

In the humanities, we study human culture and the human record. Digital and computational methods can supplement established modes of inquiry and critique in humanities disciplines, thus generating new understandings of the materials in our various subject domains. Every humanistic discipline has benefited from DH approaches, although literary studies and history are probably most widely known as beneficiaries. At UVA, where we have been investing in DH since the early 1990s, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities has supported over 70 faculty DH projects, on topics including the architecture of the University and of other historical sites; digital editions of important literary, legal, and biographical texts; musical composition tools; and immersive recreations of dance.

Sometimes the outcomes of DH scholarship are intended for academic audiences and are published in peer-reviewed journals or as monographs by academic presses; sometimes DH methods enable scholars to share their discoveries and collaborate with a broader audience in digital formats such as online archives, podcasts, crowdsourced scholarship and citizen science sites, and interactive cultural heritage platforms. This site is one portal through which you can explore our digital humanities resources at the University of Virginia.