Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities – serie

Digital Humanities is becoming an increasingly popular focus of academic endeavour. There are now hundreds of Digital Humanities centres worldwide and the subject is taught at both postgraduate and undergraduate level. Yet the term ’Digital Humanities’ is much debated. This reader brings together, for the first time, in one core volume the essential readings that have emerged in Digital Humanities. We provide a historical overview of how the term ’Humanities Computing’ developed into the term ’Digital Humanities’, and highlight core readings which explore the meaning, scope, and implementation of the field. To contextualize and frame each included reading, the editors and authors provide a commentary on the original piece. There is also an annotated bibliography of other material not included in the text to provide an essential list of reading in the discipline. This text will be required reading for scholars and students who want to discover the history of Digital Humanities through its core writings, and for those who wish to understand the many possibilities that exist when trying to define Digital Humanities.

Transformative Digital Humanities takes a two-pronged approach to the digital humanities: it examines the distinct kinds of work currently being undertaken in the field, while also addressing current issues in the digital humanities, including sustainability, accessibility, interdisciplinarity, and funding. With contributions from humanities and LIS scholars based in China, Canada, England, Germany, Spain, and the United States, this collection of case studies provides a framework for readers to develop new projects as well as to see how existing projects might continue to develop over time. This volume also participates in the current digital humanities conversation by bringing forward emerging voices that offer new options for cooperation, by demonstrating how the digital humanities can become a tool for activism, and by illustrating the potential of the digital humanities to reexamine and reconstitute existing canons.Transformative Digital Humanities considers what sorts of challenges still exist in the field and suggests how they might be addressed. As such, the book will be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of information science and digital humanities. It should also be of great interest to practitioners around the globe.

Humans at Work in the Digital Age explores the roots of twenty-first-century cultures of digital textual labor, mapping the diverse physical and cognitive acts involved, and recovering the invisible workers and work that support digital technologies.Drawing on 14 case studies organized around four sites of work, this book shows how definitions of labor have been influenced by the digital technologies that employees use to produce, interpret, or process text. Incorporating methodology and theory from a range of disciplines and highlighting labor issues related to topics as diverse as census tabulation, market research, electronic games, digital archives, and 3D modeling, contributors uncover the roles played by race, class, gender, sexuality, and national politics in determining how narratives of digital labor are constructed and erased. Because each chapter is centered on the human cost of digital technologies, however, it is individual people immersed in cultures of technology who are the focus of the volume, rather than the technologies themselves.Humans at Work in the Digital Age shows how humanistic inquiry can be a valuable tool in the emerging conversation surrounding digital textual labor. As such, this book will be essential reading for academics and postgraduate students engaged in the study of digital humanities; human-computer interaction; digital culture and social justice; race, class, gender, and sexuality in digital realms; the economics of the internet; and technology in higher education.

Access and Control in Digital Humanities explores a range of important questions about who controls data, who is permitted to reproduce or manipulate data, and what sorts of challenges digital humanists face in making their work accessible and useful. Contributors to this volume present case studies and theoretical approaches from their experience with applications for digital technology in classrooms, museums, archives, in the field and with the general public. Offering potential answers to the issues of access and control from a variety of perspectives, the volume acknowledges that access is subject to competing interests of a variety of stakeholders. Museums, universities, archives, and some communities all place claims on how data can or cannot be shared through digital initiatives and, given the collaborative nature of most digital humanities projects, those in the field need to be cognizant of the various and often competing interests and rights that shape the nature of access and how it is controlled. Access and Control in Digital Humanities will be of interest to researchers, academics and graduate students working in a variety of fields, including digital humanities, library and information science, history, museum and heritage studies, conservation, English literature, geography and legal studies.

Feminist War Games? explores the critical intersections and collisions between feminist values and perceptions of war, by asking whether feminist values can be asserted as interventional approaches to the design, play, and analysis of games that focus on armed conflict and economies of violence. Focusing on the ways that games, both digital and table-top, can function as narratives, arguments, methods, and instruments of research, the volume demonstrates the impact of computing technologies on our perceptions, ideologies, and actions. Exploring the compatibility between feminist values and systems of war through games is a unique way to pose destabilizing questions, solutions, and approaches; to prototype alternative narratives; and to challenge current idealizations and assumptions. Positing that feminist values can be asserted as a critical method of design, as an ideological design influence, and as a lens that determines how designers and players interact with and within arenas of war, the book addresses the persistence and brutality of war and issues surrounding violence in games, whilst also considering the place and purpose of video games in our cultural moment.Feminist War Games? is a timely volume that questions the often-toxic nature of online and gaming cultures. As such, the book will appeal to a broad variety of disciplinary interests, including sociology, education, psychology, literature, history, politics, game studies, digital humanities, media and cultural studies, and gender studies, as well as those interested in playing, or designing, socially engaged games.

Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age explores one major manuscript repository’s digital presence and poses timely questions about studying books from a temporal and spatial distance via the online environment. Through contributions from a large group of distinguished international scholars, the volume assesses the impact of being able to access and interpret these early manuscripts in new ways. The focus on Parker on the Web, a world-class digital repository of diverse medieval manuscripts, comes as that site made its contents Open Access. Exploring the uses of digital representations of medieval texts and their contexts, contributors consider manuscripts from multiple perspectives including production, materiality, and reception. In addition, the volume explicates new interdisciplinary frameworks of analysis for the study of the relationship between texts and their physical contexts, while centring on an appreciation of the opportunities and challenges effected by the digital representation of a tangible object. Approaches extend from the codicological, palaeographical, linguistic, and cultural to considerations of reader reception, image production, and the implications of new technologies for future discoveries. Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age advances the debate in manuscript studies about the role of digital and computational sources and tools. As such, the book will appeal to scholars and students working in the disciplines of Digital Humanities, Medieval Studies, Literary Studies, Library and Information Science, and Book History.

Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age explores one major manuscript repository’s digital presence and poses timely questions about studying books from a temporal and spatial distance via the online environment. Through contributions from a large group of distinguished international scholars, the volume assesses the impact of being able to access and interpret these early manuscripts in new ways. The focus on Parker on the Web, a world-class digital repository of diverse medieval manuscripts, comes as that site made its contents Open Access. Exploring the uses of digital representations of medieval texts and their contexts, contributors consider manuscripts from multiple perspectives including production, materiality, and reception. In addition, the volume explicates new interdisciplinary frameworks of analysis for the study of the relationship between texts and their physical contexts, while centring on an appreciation of the opportunities and challenges effected by the digital representation of a tangible object. Approaches extend from the codicological, palaeographical, linguistic, and cultural to considerations of reader reception, image production, and the implications of new technologies for future discoveries. Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age advances the debate in manuscript studies about the role of digital and computational sources and tools. As such, the book will appeal to scholars and students working in the disciplines of Digital Humanities, Medieval Studies, Literary Studies, Library and Information Science, and Book History.

The authors of this book ask how digital research tools are changing the ways in which practicing editors historicize Shakespeare's language. Scholars now encounter, interpret, and disseminate Shakespeare's language through an increasing variety of digital resources, including online editions such as the Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE), searchable lexical corpora such as the Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) or the Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) collections, high-quality digital facsimiles such as the Folger Shakespeare Library's Digital Image Collection, text visualization tools such as Voyant, apps for reading and editing on mobile devices, and more.What new insights do these tools offer about the ways Shakespeare's words made meaning in their own time? What kinds of historical or historicizing arguments can digital editions make about Shakespeare's language? A growing body of work in the digital humanities allows textual critics to explore new approaches to editing in digital environments, and enables language historians to ask and answer new questions about Shakespeare's words. The authors in this unique book explicitly bring together the two fields of textual criticism and language history in an exploration of the ways in which new tools are expanding our understanding of Early Modern English.

Data and its technologies now play a large and growing role in humanities research and teaching. This book addresses the needs of humanities scholars who seek deeper expertise in the area of data modeling and representation. The authors, all experts in digital humanities, offer a clear explanation of key technical principles, a grounded discussion of case studies, and an exploration of important theoretical concerns. The book opens with an orientation, giving the reader a history of data modeling in the humanities and a grounding in the technical concepts necessary to understand and engage with the second part of the book. The second part of the book is a wide-ranging exploration of topics central for a deeper understanding of data modeling in digital humanities. Chapters cover data modeling standards and the role they play in shaping digital humanities practice, traditional forms of modeling in the humanities and how they have been transformed by digital approaches, ontologies which seek to anchor meaning in digital humanities resources, and how data models inhabit the other analytical tools used in digital humanities research. It concludes with a glossary chapter that explains specific terms and concepts for data modeling in the digital humanities context. This book is a unique and invaluable resource for teaching and practising data modeling in a digital humanities context.

New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance explores various performative projects and forms of expression that have emerged since the onset of the smartphone. It focuses mainly on new concepts and developments that have emerged in mobile media performance. It showcases the intimate and phenomenological mobile aesthetic that has been unfolding within networked performance and media art projects for over a decade and a half. This aesthetic utilises the potential and affordances with each iteration and update of modern smartphones. Themes of embodiment, presence, liveness and connection through mobile, networked, and remote technology are revisited in the context of HD mobile cameras, selfies and live video streaming from the phone, as well as the impact of peer production, opensource and Maker culture on mobile media performance practices. It explores the surge in development of wearable devices in performance, as well as how the ‘quantified-self movement’ has affected performance works. It deals with concepts and developments in intermedial performance that incorporate mobile and wearable devices, especially from the artist’s, designer’s or dramaturge’s perspective as the creator and their creative process, working with technology as a collaborator, not just a tool or guide. The book demonstrates how artists have repurposed the device – transforming it from merely a communication device, using voice and text only – to become a new collaborative medium, a full visual, synaesthetic, interactive and performative tool of deeper expression and social change. It discusses seminal works and the evolution of the medium, within intermedial digital art and performance practices as medium for artistic expression, creative process and staged performances. It focuses on projects and artists who have pushed mobile media performance beyond the conventional blackbox. Emerging visual, digital, interactive, tactile, gestural and theatrical or performance projects that incorporate mobile or wearable devices, used as vehicles for more challenging, experimental, experiential and immersive performative artworks are highlighted. The book also contextualises Baker’s own media research and performance practice within the larger landscape with the field. It is bookended with interviews with the artists themselves on their creative process and intentions. It is the outcome of three years of research of artistic works around the world, interviews, in-person viewings of performances, as well as incorporating and reflecting on her own ongoing practice and projects in context.

This book explains how designing, playing and modifying computer games, and understanding the theory behind them, can strengthen the area of digital humanities. This book aims to help digital humanities scholars understand both the issues and also advantages of game design, as well as encouraging them to extend the field of computer game studies, particularly in their teaching and research in the field of virtual heritage. By looking at re-occurring issues in the design, playtesting and interface of serious games and game-based learning for cultural heritage and interactive history, this book highlights the importance of visualisation and self-learning in game studies and how this can intersect with digital humanities. It also asks whether such theoretical concepts can be applied to practical learning situations. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to investigate how games and virtual environments can be used in teaching and research to critique issues and topics in the humanities, particularly in virtual heritage and interactive history.

This book provides an up-to-date, coherent and comprehensive treatment of digital scholarly editing, organized according to the typical timeline and workflow of the preparation of an edition: from the choice of the object to edit, the editorial work, post-production and publication, the use of the published edition, to long-term issues and the ultimate significance of the published work. The author also examines from a theoretical and methodological point of view the issues and problems that emerge during these stages with the application of computational techniques and methods. Building on previous publications on the topic, the book discusses the most significant developments in digital textual scholarship, claiming that the alterations in traditional editorial practices necessitated by the use of computers impose radical changes in the way we think and manage texts, documents, editions and the public. It is of interest not only to scholarly editors, but to all involved in publishing and readership in a digital environment in the humanities.

What is the relationship between creativity, cultural heritage institutions and copyright? Who owns culture and cultural heritage? The digital age has expanded the horizon of creative possibilities for artists and cultural institutions - what is the impact on legal regimes that were constructed for an analogue world? What are the tensions between the safeguarding of cultural heritage and the dissemination of knowledge about culture? Inspired by a three year research project involving leading European universities, this book explores the relationship between copyright and intellectual property, creativity and innovation, and cultural heritage institutions. Its contributors are scholars from both the humanities and the social sciences - from cultural studies to law - as well as cultural practitioners and representatives from cultural heritage institutions. They all share an interest in the contribution of intellectual property to the role of cultural institutions in making culture accessible and encouraging new creativity.

Digital technologies have transformed archives in every area of their form and function, and as technologies mature so does their capacity to change our understanding and experience of material and performative cultural production. There has been an exponential explosion in the production and consumption of video online and yet there is a scarcity of knowledge and cases about video and the digital archive. This book seeks to address that through the lens of the project Circus Oz Living Archive. This project provides the case study foundation for the articulation of the issues, challenges and possibilities that the design and development of digital archives afford. Drawn from eight different disciplines and professions, the authors explore what it means to embrace the possibilities of digital technologies to transform contemporary cultural institutions and their archives into new methods of performance, representation and history.

A History of Place in the Digital Age explores the history and impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related digital mapping technologies in humanities research. Providing a historical and methodological discussion of place in the most important primary materials which make up the human record, including text and artefacts, the book explains how these materials frame, form and communicate location in the age of the internet. This leads in to a discussion of how the World Wide Web distorts and skews place, amplifying some voices and reducing others. Drawing on several connected case studies from the early modern period to the present day, the spatial writings of early modern antiquarians are explored, as are the roots of approaches to place in archaeology and philosophy. This forms the basis for a review of place online, through the complex history of the invention of the internet, in to the age of the interactive web and social media. By doing so, the book explores the key themes of spatial power and representation which these technologies frame. A History of Place in the Digital Age will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in a variety of humanities disciplines with an interest in understanding how technology can help them undertake research on spatial themes. It will be of interest as primary work to historians of technology, media and communications.

With large-scale scholarly projects dedicated to digitizing print-based magazines and a concurrent turn towards digital mapping and data visualization, periodicals that were once accessible only in the archive now have the capacity to reach a wider audience, and make visible previously overlooked networks and connections enacted within and across the magazines. International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms: Image, Object, Text offers a unique contribution to the field of periodical studies, while also broadening the scope of purview to consider related content with regards to other relevant printed matter and cultural products, as well as digital archiving strategies. Including interdisciplinary contributions from academics around the world, the volume presents a wide range of approaches to periodicals and printed matter from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Questions of material print culture and the digital realm are considered both via theoretical and more empirical approaches. As a whole, the book considers the pluralism of perspectives that the study of periodicals and printed matter contribute to our historical understanding of various political and social issues, and also devotes attention to the ways in which digital archiving projects can be instrumentalized as a strategy for filling in gaps in the historical record. International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms should be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduates engaged in the study of periodicals, publishing, book history, world literature, digital humanities, media, visual and material culture.

The Historical Web and Digital Humanities fosters discussions between the Digital Humanities and web archive studies by focussing on one of the largest entities of the web, namely national and transnational web domains such as the British, French, or European web.With a view to investigating whether, and how, web studies and web historiography can inform and contribute to the Digital Humanities, this volume contains a number of case studies and methodological and theoretical discussions that both illustrate the potential of studying the web, in this case national web domains, and provide an insight into the challenges associated with doing so. Commentary on and possible solutions to these challenges are debated within the chapters and each one contributes in its own way to a web history in the making that acknowledges the specificities of the archived web.The Historical Web and Digital Humanities will be essential reading for those with an interest in how the past of the web can be studied, as well as how Big Data approaches can be applied to the archived web. As a result, this volume will appeal to academics and students working and studying in the fields of Digital Humanities, internet and media studies, history, cultural studies, and communication.

Information and Knowledge Organisation explores the role of knowledge organisation in the digital humanities. By focusing on how information is described, represented and organised in both research and practice, this work furthers the transdisciplinary nature of digital humanities.Including contributions from Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, the volume explores the potential uses of, and challenges involved in, applying the organisation of information and knowledge in the various areas of Digital Humanities. With a particular focus on the digital worlds of cultural heritage collections, the book also includes chapters that focus on machine learning, knowledge graphs, text analysis, text annotations and network analysis. Other topics covered include: semantic technologies, conceptual schemas and data augmentation, digital scholarly editing, metadata creation, browsing, visualisation and relevance ranking. Most importantly, perhaps, the book provides a starting point for discussions about the impact of information and knowledge organisation and related tools on the methodologies used in the Digital Humanities field.Information and Knowledge Organisation is intended for use by researchers, students and professionals interested in the role information and knowledge organisation plays in the Digital Humanities. It will be essential reading for those working in library and information science, computer science and across the humanities. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Information and Knowledge Organisation explores the role of knowledge organisation in the digital humanities. By focusing on how information is described, represented and organised in both research and practice, this work furthers the transdisciplinary nature of digital humanities.Including contributions from Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, the volume explores the potential uses of, and challenges involved in, applying the organisation of information and knowledge in the various areas of Digital Humanities. With a particular focus on the digital worlds of cultural heritage collections, the book also includes chapters that focus on machine learning, knowledge graphs, text analysis, text annotations and network analysis. Other topics covered include: semantic technologies, conceptual schemas and data augmentation, digital scholarly editing, metadata creation, browsing, visualisation and relevance ranking. Most importantly, perhaps, the book provides a starting point for discussions about the impact of information and knowledge organisation and related tools on the methodologies used in the Digital Humanities field.Information and Knowledge Organisation is intended for use by researchers, students and professionals interested in the role information and knowledge organisation plays in the Digital Humanities. It will be essential reading for those working in library and information science, computer science and across the humanities. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities examines the data-driven labour that underpinned the Index Thomisticus–a preeminent project of the incunabular digital humanities–and advanced the data-foundations of computing in the Humanities. Through oral history and archival research, Nyhan reveals a hidden history of the entanglements of gender in the intellectual and technical work of the early digital humanities. Setting feminized keypunching in its historical contexts–from the history of concordance making, to the feminization of the office and humanities computing–this book delivers new insight into the categories of work deemed meritorious of acknowledgement and attribution and, thus, how knowledge and expertise was defined in and by this field. Focalizing the overlooked yet significant data-driven labour of lesser-known individuals, this book challenges exclusionary readings of the history of computing in the Humanities. Contributing to ongoing conversations about the need for alternative genealogies of computing, this book is also relevant to current debates about diversity and representation in the Academy and the wider computing sector. Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities will be of interest to researchers and students studying digital humanities, library and information science, the history of computing, oral history, the history of the humanities, and the sociology of knowledge and science.

Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities examines the data-driven labour that underpinned the Index Thomisticus–a preeminent project of the incunabular digital humanities–and advanced the data-foundations of computing in the Humanities. Through oral history and archival research, Nyhan reveals a hidden history of the entanglements of gender in the intellectual and technical work of the early digital humanities. Setting feminized keypunching in its historical contexts–from the history of concordance making, to the feminization of the office and humanities computing–this book delivers new insight into the categories of work deemed meritorious of acknowledgement and attribution and, thus, how knowledge and expertise was defined in and by this field. Focalizing the overlooked yet significant data-driven labour of lesser-known individuals, this book challenges exclusionary readings of the history of computing in the Humanities. Contributing to ongoing conversations about the need for alternative genealogies of computing, this book is also relevant to current debates about diversity and representation in the Academy and the wider computing sector. Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities will be of interest to researchers and students studying digital humanities, library and information science, the history of computing, oral history, the history of the humanities, and the sociology of knowledge and science.

In this unique book the author explores the history of pioneering computer art and its contribution to art history by way of examining Ernest Edmonds’ art from the late 1960s to the present day. Edmonds’ inventions of new concepts, tools and forms of art, along with his close involvement with the communities of computer artists, constructive artists and computer technologists, provides the context for discussion of the origins and implications of the relationship between art and technology. Drawing on interviews with Edmonds and primary research in archives of his work, the book offers a new contribution to the history of the development of digital art and places Edmonds’ work in the context of contemporary art history.

What are the leading tools and archives in digital cultural heritage? How can they be integrated into research infrastructures to better serve their intended audiences? In this book, authors from a wide range of countries, representing some of the best research projects in digital humanities related to cultural heritage, discuss their latest findings, both in terms of new tools and archives, and how they are used (or not used) by both specialists and by the general public.

Cultural heritage communities of interest have increasingly expanded from cultural heritage professionals to volunteers, special interest groups and independent citizen-led initiative groups. Digital technology has also increasingly impacted cultural heritage by affording novel experiences of it – it features in a number of activities for all the aforementioned groups, as well as acting as support for visitors to cultural heritage centres.With different degrees of formality and training, these communities are increasingly defining and taking ownership of what is of value to them, thus reconfiguring the care, communication, interpretation and validation of heritage. Digital technology has played a crucial role in this transformative process.In a fully international context, cultural heritage practitioners, community champions and academics from different fields of study have contributed to this book. Each chapter brings to the fore the multiple relationships between heritage, communities and technologies as a focus of study and reflection in an inclusive way. Contributions touch upon present and future opportunities for technology, as well as participatory design processes with different stakeholders.This book brings together ideas from different disciplines, cultures, methods and goals, to inspire scholars and practitioners involved in community heritage projects.

The Strehlow Archive is one of Australia's most important collections of film, sound, archival records and museum objects relating to the ceremonial life of Aboriginal people. The aim of this book is to provide a significant study of the relationship of archives to contemporary forms of digital mediation. The volume introduces a specific archive, the Strehlow Collection, and tracks the ways in which its materials and research dissemination practices are influenced by media forms we now identify with the emergence of digital technology.

In the past decade, the way image based media is created, disseminated, and shared has changed exponentially, as digital imaging technology has replaced traditional film based media. Digital images have become the pervasive photographic medium of choice for the general public. Most libraries, archives, museums, and galleries have undertaken some type of digitisation program: converting their holdings into two dimensional digital images which are available for the general user via the Internet. This raises issues for those aiming to facilitate the creation and preservation of digital images whilst supplying and improving user access to image based material. Digital Images for the Information Professional provides an overview of the place of images in the changing information environment, and the use, function, and appropriation of digital images in both institutional and personal settings. Covering the history, technical underpinnings, sustainability, application, and management of digital images, the text is an accessible guide to both established and developing imaging technologies, providing those within the information sector with essential background knowledge of this increasingly ubiquitous medium.

This is a study of the forms and institutions of print - newspapers, books, scholarly editions, publishing, libraries - as they relate to and are changed by emergent digital forms and institutions. In the early 1990s hypertext was briefly hailed as a liberating writing tool for non-linear creation. Fast forward no more than a decade, and we are reading old books from screens. It is, however, the newspaper, for around two hundred years print's most powerful mass vehicle, whose economy persuasively shapes its electronic remediation through huge digitization initiatives, dominated by a handful of centralizing service providers, funded and wrapped round by online advertising. The error is to assume a culture of total replacement. The Internet is just another information space, sharing characteristics that have always defined such spaces - wonderfully effective and unstable, loaded with valuable resources and misinformation; that is, both good and bad. This is why it is important that writers, critics, publishers and librarians - in modern parlance, the knowledge providers - be critically engaged in shaping and regulating cyberspace, and not merely the passive instruments or unreflecting users of the digital tools in our hands.

The frequency with which particular words are used in a text can tell us something meaningful both about that text and also about its author because their choice of words is seldom random. Focusing on the most frequent lexical items of a number of generated word frequency lists can help us to determine whether all the texts are written by the same author. Alternatively, they might wish to determine whether the most frequent words of a given text (captured by its word frequency list) are suggestive of potentially meaningful patterns that could have been overlooked had the text been read manually. This edited collection brings together cutting-edge research written by leading experts in the field on the construction of word-lists for the analysis of both frequency and keyword usage. Taken together, these papers provide a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the most exciting research being conducted in this subject.

This unique book critically evaluates the virtual representation of the past through digital media. A distinguished team of leading experts in the field approach digital research in history and archaeology from contrasting viewpoints, including philosophical, methodological and technical. They illustrate the challenges involved in representing the past digitally by focusing on specific cases of a particular historical period, place or technical problem.