Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage
Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage
*I am currently recruiting Ph.D. students - please see below!*
Q & A
What is “computing cultural heritage”?
Definitions are always tricky! After all, have we even settled on a definition for the digital humanities yet? With “computing cultural heritage,” this lab foregrounds interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of computing and our collective digitized and born-digital cultural heritage. While this includes computational work, such as machine learning, human-computer interaction, and data science, this definition is intended to be even more capacious in order to include research that investigates the role of computing itself within this context. In this regard, “computing cultural heritage” is not just computational but humanistic in its approach. In practice, this means:
- working closely with libraries, archives, and museums at the collection level to study real-world challenges surrounding digital access
- imagining alternative approaches and systems with the goal of answering these questions
- in doing so, generating even more questions!
Here are some related fields and ideas: library & information science, the digital humanities, computational humanities, cultural analytics, machine learning, human-computer interaction, data science, exploratory search, critical data studies, digital content management, and “collections as data.”
What are the goals of this lab?
Some goals of this lab are:
- To build systems and tear them down
- To advance interdisciplinary research with contributions across LIS, computer science, and the humanities
- To investigate “scale” as it relates to cultural heritage
- To imagine alternative futures for digital cultural heritage in the age of the anthropocene
- To build and cultivate communities surrounding digital collections
- To study both the digitized and the born-digital
What are some examples of work that the lab hopes to undertake?
Perhaps the best example at the moment is Newspaper Navigator, created by Ben in collaboration with Dan Weld in UW CSE, LC Labs at the Library of Congress, and the National Digital Newspaper Program. Here is a presentation that walks through an overview of the project.
Interested in joining the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage as a Ph.D. student?
Fantastic! I am currently recruiting Ph.D. students through the University of Washington’s Information Science Ph.D. program for the Fall of 2025 (applications for the 2024-25 academic year have closed). You can learn more about the program here (applications for this cycle will be due on December 5th, 2023).
Please do reach out by email (bcgl@cs.washington.edu) if you are interested in joining the lab – it would be great if you could provide me with some background on your research interests and why you are interested in joining the UW iSchool in general and the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage in particular. I look forward to receiving your email!
Undergraduates / master's students / Ph.D. students in other departments?
I am still developing pathways for students outside of the UW iSchool’s Ph.D. program, but please do feel free to reach out in the meantime!
Other questions?
Great, please feel free to reach out by email!
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