HADES Seminar: The Digital Chamber: An Inside Look

Our October seminar saw approximately 25 attendees join us for our second panel with scholars from the Digital Chamber. Details below.

Moderator: Prof David Goodman

Speakers: Dr Mia Martin Hobbs, Thomas Keep, Dr Reuben Brown

Affiliations: Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne

Format: 30 minute presentation & 30 minute open discussion via Zoom

Abstract: For the HADES panel this month, we are exploring the Digital Chamber, a space within the University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts Digital Studio. for researchers working on digital humanities and social sciences projects. Our panellists are three of the 2021 Digital Chamber residents, Dr Mia Martin Hobbs, Thomas Keep, and Dr Reuben Brown, who will be speaking about some of the e-research work they have been doing this year in the fields of history, archaeology and ethnomusicology. Our moderator will be Prof David Goodman, Digital Studio Director.

Dr Mia Martin Hobbs is an oral historian of war and its legacies. Her research interests include the Vietnam War, the War on Terror, memory, trauma, place, gender, peace, and security.  She completed her PhD in History at the University of Melbourne in 2018, and her book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys, was published by Cambridge University Press in October 2021. Through a researcher residency in the Digital Studio at the University of Melbourne, she is developing an interactive spatial-temporal of veterans’ journeys. Mia is currently undertaking a second transnational oral history project with women and minorities who served in the British, American, and Australian armed forces in the so-called War on Terror. She has published on veteran memories and war narratives in The Australian Journal of Politics and History and Oral History Review, and written on contemporary issues surrounding veterans’ returns to Vietnam for Australian Policy History and The Conversation.

Thomas Keep is an archaeologist, photogrammetrist, and PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He is researching the use of digital representations of heritage materials and the possibility of virtual reality to engage audiences with rural archaeological sites. He has worked as a research assistant with Lithodomos VR, a photogrammetrist at the Hellenic Museum of Melbourne, and has excavated in Italy, Israel, and across Victoria.

Dr Reuben Brown is a non-Indigenous (Settler/Balanda) scholar at the Research Unit for Indigenous Languages, Faculty of Arts, who has collaborated over a decade with Bininj and Arrarrkpi (Indigenous people of Western Arnhem Land). His ARC DECRA project ‘Modern diplomacy: understanding ceremonial exchange at Indigenous festivals’ investigates how ceremonial performance at Indigenous festivals in northern Australia enacts diplomacy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants, and between different clan and language groups. The project combines interviews with ceremony leaders about situated Indigenous knowledge, archival research and analysis of ceremonial performance at festivals. In this presentation, Reuben will discuss preliminary work to develop a mobile song library of archival recordings and associated metadata for offline access at remote festivals. The project aims to support intergenerational learning by apprentice singers and dancers and improve access to and links between datasets, archives and Indigenous communities.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/hades-the-digital-chamber-an-inside-look-tickets-190126161467

HADES Seminar Series: Humanities in the Digital Age
From the Humanities and Diverse eResearch Scholars group (HADES), this series brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Humanities and digital scholarship. We will hear from speakers on topics ranging from digital ethics and machine learning through to architecture and literary studies, but always with a focus on the crucial role that the Humanities play in helping to explain and shape complex human experiences. The series aims to challenge and extend understandings of digital research in the Humanities and present new and emerging work by scholars working across and between disciplines.

Seminars will be held monthly on the third Thursday of every month at 3:30pm.