Five Years of HADES

In late 2020, a group of researchers and research professionals at the University of Melbourne came together keen to disrupt broader ‘data science’ conventions and understandings, specifically around the digital humanities. We wanted to connect and learn together with researchers interested in diverse aspects of data-driven research, not through the tools we use but at the intersections of our disciplines across the digital humanities.

We established HADES, a community of practice for Humanities And Diverse E-Research Scholars, to connect and share ideas about projects, events, collaboration opportunities, teaching, workshops and new digital approaches in Humanities research.

Data-driven research cuts across disciplinary boundaries in the Humanities and it can bring together technological concerns with diverse methodologies, epistemologies and ontologies. Connecting across these –ologies can be challenging to find common ground. These challenges have provided fertile ground for explorations in HADES.

Here is a list of HADES seminars over the life of our community are:

• Rage against the machine: Reimagining the future by contemplating the past (an humanities approach to digital research)    Apr-21
• The Heart Asks for Pleasure First: What happens when theatre artists lead interdisciplinary, discovery-oriented research projects?         May-21
• Text Genes: Using phylogenetics to explore the evolution of the New Testament text Jun-21
• Bridging the Data Gap: Diverse approaches in digital humanities       Jul-21
• Mediating mourning: overcoming distance through sensitive thano-technological design                 Aug-21
• Exploring opportunities for musician’s health and performance enhancement using VR simulation training       Sep-21
• The Digital Chamber: An Inside Look      Oct-21
• Workshop: Research Through Making   Feb-22
• Creating and sustaining a community of practice: driving research impact and visibility. Mar-22
• Latent Geographic Associations; Theorising Mapping in Journalistic and Fictional Accounts of 19th Century Bushfires                May-22
• Guaraní Resistance and Deforestation, 1500-2021: A Digital Mapping Project          Jun-22
• Digital Practice Based Research                 Jul-22
• Education Research goes into the Metaverse   Oct-22
• Negative digital urbanism: unknowability, illegibility and ambivalence in the platform city                Nov-22
• Toronto panel: deceptive design, queering history & critical infrastructure Feb-23
• What the Hell is Digital Anthropology? – Mar-23
• Can a building have a heart? Melbourne Connect’s AI artwork – Apr-23
• Can your phone improve your wellbeing – May 23
• What Colour to Use? Accurate, accessible & appealing research outputs – Jul-23
• Academic ethics and the lives of data – Aug 23
• Decentering Ethics with AI Art September 23
• Play and Immersion as Method – Oct 23
• How Australian places are represented on Wikipedia – Apr-25
• Between the Spaces of Borders May 25
• Location in archaeology – How certain are we this thing was there? Jun-25
• Against erasure – Digital witnessing of the Manus Island Detention Centre – Aug 25
• Same data, different stories: How different maps can change the data narrative – Sept-25