Syllabus

Published

2 September 2026

Modified

2 September 2026

Fourteen sessions, Tuesdays 10:15–12:00, Unitobler F-112.

ImportantHow the readings work

The reading listed under a session is the reading you prepare for the following week. It is introduced at the end of one session and discussed at the beginning of the next. So the Sahle text listed under Session 1 is discussed in Session 2, and so on.

Openly available texts are linked directly. Everything else — scans in particular — is in the ILIAS course space.

Who teaches what

Hodel Tobias Hodel Spadini Elena Spadini Beretta Francesco Beretta Hart Stephen Hart Demleitner Adrian Demleitner Prada Ziegler Ismail Prada Ziegler Course team all three convenors

Badges below mark who leads each session.

Sessions

Session 1 (15 September 2026)

Welcome and information · What is DH: a bird’s-eye view Course team

Reading for next week:

  • Patrick Sahle, ‘Digital Humanities? Gibt’s doch gar nicht!’, Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Sonderband, no. 1 (2015), https://doi.org/10.17175/sb001_004.

Task:

DH Lab in parallel: Programme information, introductions, individual consultations

Session 2 (22 September 2026)

What is DH? Discussion of Sahle · What is data? Working with an LLM agent · Zotero introduction Hodel

Reading for next week:

Task:

DH Lab in parallel: Get to know your computer — CLI, paths, storage

Session 3 (29 September 2026)

What is data? Forms of data and metadata · GitHub introduction Hodel

Reading for next week:

  • Julia Flanders and Fotis Jannidis, ‘Data Modeling in a Digital Humanities Context: An Introduction’, in The Shape of Data in Digital Humanities: Modeling Texts and Text-based Resources, ed. Julia Flanders and Fotis Jannidis (London: Routledge, 2018), 3–25, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315552941. — scan in ILIAS

DH Lab in parallel: Markdown, Obsidian, GitHub, VSCodium

Session 4 (6 October 2026)

Data structures: conceptual modelling, relational and graph models, Dublin Core and METS Beretta

Reading for next week:

  • Francesco Beretta, ‘Conceptualising Information Production in the Context of the SDHSS Ontology Ecosystem’, Methodos. Savoirs Et Textes, no. 24 (June 2024), https://doi.org/10.4000/12xqn.

DH Lab in parallel: Replacing Excel with SQLite

Session 5 (13 October 2026)

Data modelling: Linked Open Data · RDF, ontologies and Wikidata Beretta

Reading for next week:

  • Tim Berners-Lee et al., ‘World-Wide Web: The Information Universe’, Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy 2, no. 1 (1992): 52–58. — on the history of the web and hypertext
  • Roman Bleier et al., eds, Digital Scholarly Editions as Interfaces, Schriften Des Instituts für Dokumentologie Und Editorik 12 (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2018), https://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/9085/. (Introduction) — on digital editions as interfaces

DH Lab in parallel: From LOD to RiC-O, LRM and CIDOC-CRM

Session 6 (20 October 2026)

Data publication: the web as interface · HTML, CSS and XML · GitHub Pages introduction Hodel

Reading for next week:

  • Patrick Sahle, ‘What Is a Scholarly Digital Edition?’, in Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories and Practices, ed. Matthew James Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo, Digital Humanities Series (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017), 19–39, http://books.openedition.org/obp/3397.

DH Lab in parallel: Introduction to APIs

Session 7 (27 October 2026)

Data modelling: editions · What is scholarly editing? · TEI Spadini

Reading for next week:

DH Lab in parallel: Scholarly editing as a form of data publication (TEI)

Session 8 (3 November 2026)

Data analysis: networks · Gephi Lite, using the CSV produced in Session 5 Hodel

Reading for next week:

DH Lab in parallel: Introduction to Omeka

Session 9 (10 November 2026)

Data analysis: text corpora · Voyant Tools, using the corpus from your Zotero library Hodel

Reading for next week:

  • Hugh Craig, ‘The Geography of Tragedy: Mapping Allusions to Places in a Set of Shakespearean Plays’, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 40, no. 3 (July 2025): 747–61, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaf055. — open access; read it as a complete workflow. The TEI source texts Hugh Craig, ‘Texts of 22 Tragedies with Metadata File’ (Zenodo, December 2024), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14504814. and the map and data are both published, so every stage can be inspected.

DH Lab in parallel: Introduction to Colab / Noto

Session 10 (17 November 2026)

Data analysis: geovisualisation · DARIAH Geo-Browser and Palladio Hodel

Reading for next week:

  • An introduction to machine learning (to be announced)

DH Lab in parallel: Data cleaning and connecting: OpenRefine and reconciliation

Session 11 (24 November 2026)

From algorithms to machine learning · Introduction to machine learning and bias Hodel

Reading for next week:

  • Sarah Lang and Elena Suárez Cronauer, ‘Beyond Data Feminism. Towards Ethical Data Work in the (Digital) Humanities’, Zeitschrift für Digitale Geisteswissenschaften, February 2026, https://doi.org/10.17175/wp_2026.

DH Lab in parallel: Text recognition: introduction to eScriptorium

Session 12 (1 December 2026)

LLMs: stochastic parrots and research agents Hodel

Reading for next week:

  • Emily M. Bender et al., ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?’, in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2021), 610–23, https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.

DH Lab in parallel: GenAI in action: multimodal LLMs in the humanities

Session 13 (8 December 2026)

Data feminism · Reviewing the semester from an intersectional perspective Hodel

Further reading:

DH Lab in parallel: Workflow presentations

Session 14 (15 December 2026)

FAIR, CARE and digital sustainability Course team

Further reading:

DH Lab in parallel: Final-year presentations, Master Minor and Master Major

Assessment

See the Assignment page for the full brief, the criteria and the deadlines.

Literature

TipNote on copyright

We try to use openly available literature wherever possible. Where that is not possible, scans are made available in the ILIAS course space for enrolled students, or the text can be obtained through the library platform swisscovery. We advise against using platforms such as Library Genesis, despite the substantive arguments in their favour — see Joe Karaganis, ed. Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11339.001.0001.

Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?’ In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 610–23. New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.
Beretta, Francesco. ‘Conceptualising Information Production in the Context of the SDHSS Ontology Ecosystem’. Methodos. Savoirs Et Textes, no. 24 (June 2024). https://doi.org/10.4000/12xqn.
Berners-Lee, Tim, Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Groff, and Bernd Pollermann. ‘World-Wide Web: The Information Universe’. Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy 2, no. 1 (1992): 52–58.
Bleier, Roman, Martina Bürgermeister, Helmut W. Klug, Frederike Neuber, and Gerlinde Schneider, eds. Digital Scholarly Editions as Interfaces. Schriften Des Instituts für Dokumentologie Und Editorik 12. Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2018. https://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/9085/.
Carroll, Stephanie Russo, Ibrahim Garba, Oscar L. Figueroa-Rodríguez, Jarita Holbrook, Raymond Lovett, Simeon Materechera, Mark Parsons, et al. ‘The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance’. Data Science Journal 19, no. 1 (2020): 43. https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-043.
Craig, Hugh. ‘Texts of 22 Tragedies with Metadata File’. Zenodo, December 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14504814.
———. ‘The Geography of Tragedy: Mapping Allusions to Places in a Set of Shakespearean Plays’. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 40, no. 3 (July 2025): 747–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaf055.
D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11805.001.0001.
Flanders, Julia, and Fotis Jannidis. ‘Data Modeling in a Digital Humanities Context: An Introduction’. In The Shape of Data in Digital Humanities: Modeling Texts and Text-based Resources, edited by Julia Flanders and Fotis Jannidis, 3–25. London: Routledge, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315552941.
Karaganis, Joe, ed. Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11339.001.0001.
Lang, Sarah, and Elena Suárez Cronauer. ‘Beyond Data Feminism. Towards Ethical Data Work in the (Digital) Humanities’. Zeitschrift für Digitale Geisteswissenschaften, February 2026. https://doi.org/10.17175/wp_2026.
O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown, 2016.
Pomerantz, Jeffrey. Metadata. The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015.
Sahle, Patrick. ‘Digital Humanities? Gibt’s doch gar nicht!’ Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Sonderband, no. 1 (2015). https://doi.org/10.17175/sb001_004.
———. ‘What Is a Scholarly Digital Edition?’ In Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories and Practices, edited by Matthew James Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo, 19–39. Digital Humanities Series. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017. http://books.openedition.org/obp/3397.
Schöch, Christof. ‘Big? Smart? Clean? Messy? Data in the Humanities’. Journal of Digital Humanities 2, no. 3 (2013). https://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-3/big-smart-clean-messy-data-in-the-humanities/.
Underwood, Ted. ‘Theorizing Research Practices We Forgot to Theorize Twenty Years Ago’. Representations 127, no. 1 (2014): 64–72. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2014.127.1.64.
Weingart, Scott B. ‘Demystifying Networks, Parts I & II’. Journal of Digital Humanities 1, no. 1 (2011). http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/demystifying-networks-by-scott-weingart/.
Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, et al. ‘The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship’. Scientific Data 3 (2016): 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.
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