The current aaDH Executive Committee includes:

President: Associate Professor Rachel Hendery, Western Sydney University
Vice-President: Dr Tully Barnett, Flinders University
Secretary: Dr Simon Musgrave, Monash University
Communications Manager: Dr Tyne Daile Sumner, University of Melbourne
Treasurer: Dr Susan Ford, Australian National University
Member: Dr Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Australian National University
Member: Alexander Ritchie, University of Otago
Member: Professor Shawn Ross, Macquarie University

Congratulations and welcome to our new members and thanks to all!

The 2021 Digital Humanities Australia conference, the biennial conference of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities, was hosted by Canterbury University with the theme ‘Ka Renarena Te Taukaea | Creating Communities’.

While the quality of the research shared across the whole conference was very high, the conference committee awarded a series of highly commended papers as outlined below:

Caelum Greaves, Ursula Standring Bellugue, Chris Lam from Otago University was Highly Commended for their panel ‘What are literary games, and why do they matter?’. The conference committee valued the panel’s originality, creativity and high quality presentations.

Katya Krylova, University of Canterbury, was Highly Commended for the paper, ‘More-Than-Human Tongues: Talking Animals and Their Agencies in Technocultural Networks’.

Finn Petrie, Otago University, was Highly Commended for the paper ‘Houses for Plants by Plants: Making With Plants and Speculations on a Community Biosemiotics’.

David Green, Otago University, was Highly Commended for the paper ‘Fragility and Responsiveness: Bruno’s Thin Skin’.

Joshua Black, University of Canterbury, was Highly Commended for the paper ‘Philosophical Writing in Early New Zealand Newspapers: A Case Study of Corpus Construction from Large Digitised Newspaper Datasets’.

Congraulations to these five recipients of a Highly Commended paper or panel award.

Thanks to all presenters whose excellent work made for such a rewarding conference experience. And thanks to the members of the conference committee and aaDH executive committee for engaging in the commended paper process.

A message from Simon Musgrave, aaDH Secretary:

The terms of several members of the aaDH Executive Committee are concluding.

aaDH President Professor Paul Millar announced his decision to step down at the end of the 2021 DHA conference with one year left of his term, and the role has been filled by Associate Professor Rachel Hendery. The committee thanks Paul Millar for his service to the association.

The Executive Committee, as specified in the Rules of the association, consists of nine members, with the possibility of additional members being co-opted. Such an appointment had been in place, but at this election we will return to the nine-member model.

There are currently six vacancies to be filled with terms starting in 2022:

• Vice-President (3 years, 2022-24)
• Communications Manager (3 years, 2022-24)
• Treasurer (2 years, 2022-23)
• 1 x Ordinary Member (3 years, 2022-24)
• 2 x Ordinary Members (2 years, 2022-23)

Nominations for these positions are now open.

The Rules of the association relevant to this process are:

25 Election of officers and ordinary members of the committee

25.1 To be considered valid, nominations of candidates for election as officers of the association or as ordinary members of the committee must be

25.1.1 made to the secretary by electronic transmission; and

25.1.2 transmitted to the secretary not less than 7 days before the date fixed for the holding of the annual elections; and

25.1.3 endorsed by at least one current officer of the association or ordinary member of the committee.

25.2 A candidate may nominate for one or more vacant positions on the committee.

25.3 If insufficient nominations are received to fill all vacancies on the committee, the candidates nominated will be deemed to be elected and further nominations may be received at the annual general meeting.

25.4 If the number of nominations received is equal to the number of vacancies to be filled, the persons nominated shall be deemed to be elected.

25.5 If the number of nominations exceeds the number of vacancies to be filled, a ballot must be held.

In relation to rule 25.1.3, I will endorse the nomination of any member in good standing (in the absence of endorsement from another committee member).

In relation to rule 25.5, if a ballot is necessary, it will be run electronically by OUP. To vote in such an election, it is necessary to be a member of the association in good standing (i.e., a financial member).

Although rule 25.1.2 allows for nominations up to 7 days before the election date, it would greatly assist OUP to have details of as many nominees as possible earlier than that date. In addition to sending your formal nomination to me, please also send a short candidate’s statement (ca. 150 words) which will be made available online.

The election will take place between January 31 2022 and February 4 2022; members eligible to vote will receive details from OUP before the election opens. Prospective candidates are welcome to contact Simon Musgrave or Tully Barnett (aaDH communications manager) at any time.

At the end of #DHA2021 – Digital Humanities Australasia, aaDH’s biennial conference – Paul Millar announced the end of his term as aaDH’s President after three years of service in the role and the hosting of a supremely successful conference. Millar has one year left on his term and, in accordance with the aaDH’s constitution, the Executive Committee called for nominations to fill the role from within the committee. As a result of this process, Associate Professor Rachel Hendery was elected as the President of aaDH.

Here’s some information about the new President of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities:

I am Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University. My background is in linguistics, and I work on language contact and change, particularly in the Pacific, and how new digital tools and techniques allow us to research these in new ways. My research interests include historical linguistics, contact linguistics, typology, mapping, simulation, virtual reality, and data visualisation.

From 2011-2014 I held an Australian Research Council (ARC) postdoctoral fellowship to conduct research on the variety of English spoken on Palmerston Island, in the Cook Islands. I am currently a CI on several further ARC-funded projects: Howitt and Fison’s Archive: Insights into Australian Aboriginal Language, Kinship and Culture’ led by Helen Gardner at Deakin University, Mapping Print; Charting Enlightenment, led by Simon Burrows at Western Sydney University, Waves of Words: Mapping and modelling the history of Australia’s Asia-Pacific ties, and Seeing Yourself in Digital Cultural Heritage, both of which I lead at Western Sydney University.

I am also a member of the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, the Centre of Excellence for Language Dynamics and the Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. I co-lead the Intergener8 Living Lab at Western Sydney University. I am the Treasurer for the Australasian Association of Digital Humanities and the NSW coordinator for the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad.

The aaDH would like to thank Professor Paul Millar for his leadership during difficult times and wishes him well on his well-earned sabbatical.

The DHA2021 Call for Proposals deadline has been extended to 27 September 2021

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) is pleased to invite proposals for DHA2021 (our COVID-delayed conference formerly known as DHA2020).

DHA2021 will be a virtual conference running from 22-25 November 2021 (New Zealand time zone).

Proposals from any country will be considered, but conference participants will need to be members of aaDH, or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference. Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

This call for proposals closes on 27 September 2021.

Please email proposals to: dha2020@canterbury.ac.nz.

The DHA2021 conference theme is ‘Ka Renarena Te Taukaea / Creating Communities’. This theme invites close examination of what connects DH scholars and practitioners to each other and to communities. We welcome a strong local focus on expanding the ways to develop and interconnect research activities within and beyond the Digital Humanities in Australasia and the Pacific. Given the extreme events our region has been experiencing – including terrorist hate crimes, pandemic disruption, and the ongoing environmental catastrophe – it also seems timely to think carefully and courageously about the role DH might play in creating communities capable of leading and contributing meaningfully to global conversations about a safe, equitable’ and sustainable future.

We hope DHA2021 will focus on how digital technologies can not only create connections but support diversity, creativity, community building, wellbeing, and resilience in a world of rapidly evolving challenges. We believe it is a strength of our evolving discipline that DH is constantly revising and renewing its connections with others, often acting as an institutional, methodological, or discursive link between fields of research, professional practices, and programmes within cultural heritage, and we expect many contributions will reflect this. At the same time, our location in the South Pacific creates a unique opportunity and responsibility to engage DH in rethinking the place of the humanities locally, regionally, and in relation to the major social and environmental challenges we face globally.

Recent years have seen the growth of initiatives that expand DH’s boundaries in areas such as computational humanities, Indigenous and postcolonial studies, spatial humanities, critical making, and infrastructure studies. In short, the breadth of these research and pedagogical interests makes it timely to consider the ways ‘community’ shapes and is shaped by DH.

We invite contributors to address the conference theme through the following sub-topics:

• DH and First Nations and Indigenous communities
• Diversity in DH – ensuring inclusion, promoting varied perspectives, giving marginalised communities a voice
• Regional and global communities – DH scholarship across places and cultures, especially the divides of postcolonial legacies, geopolitical or environmental boundaries
• Social and methodological scales of research in DH:
  • How does DH examine social scales – the personal, the family, the institution, the city;
  • How do these relate to methodological questions such as close vs. distant reading?
• DH as public humanities – how do we communicate humanities research and seek the attention and participation of wider communities with research activities?
• DH within topical issue communities, such as environmental humanities, critical race studies, or countering online extremism
• Communities as objects of study, e.g. online communities, interpretive communities
• DH within event communities, such as DH in post-disaster research
• Collaborations across strongly ‘disciplined’ boundaries or research communities, such as between DH and physical or mathematical sciences
• Research groups and labs as communities
• DH communities within (or across) institutions and between DHers in academic, library, software development and other professional roles.
• Creative and artistic communities: digital art, literature, and creative media as DH practice, and a way to interrogate shared critical and cultural concerns
• Pedagogical communities – teachers + students. The real learning happens through contact with students.
• Any other topic relevant to Digital Humanities in the Australasian / Indo-Pacific / Asian region.

We welcome the following types of contributions, all of which will be able to be delivered virtually:

1. Posters

Posters are intended for presenting work-in-progress as well as demonstrations of digital projects or software. Some version of a poster session will take place during the conference, with presenters available to explain and discuss their work. This may include both traditional A1 print posters, and ‘3-slides, with 3-minute video/audio’ posters for on-line display. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

2. Short papers

Short papers are allocated 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

3. Long papers

Long papers are allocated 25 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research, significantly developed or completed digital projects, or theoretical / methodological advances. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

4. Multi-paper Panels

Panels should bring together three to five papers in order to address a single topic related to the conference theme. The aaDH 2020 Programme Committee adopts the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ (ADHO) commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive global research community, and panel organisers should consider this carefully when selecting panel members. Panel proposals should include a panel abstract of no more than 500 words, in addition to individual paper abstracts of no more than 500 words each. Panel organisers are encouraged to contact the chairs of the aaDH Programme Committee to discuss their proposals in advance. Innovative ideas for virtual or hybrid panels are welcome.

5. Workshops

Workshop proposals may be for half-day, whole-day, or programmed on-line sessions, on any topic relevant to Digital Humanities. These may include discussion and/or computing activities on specific software, tools or programming techniques; DH research methodologies, frameworks or theories; or introductions to specific research problems or domains. These proposals should be no longer than 1500 words, and should include a title, full contact details for all workshop presenters, an outline of the workshop structure, a list of facilities or resources required, and any constraints (such as maximum number of participants, software needed etc.).

Please note the following requirements for all proposals

• Abstracts for posters, short papers, and long papers may be no more than 1000 words (panel and workshop proposals may be longer, as specified above).
• The aaDH Programme Committee may offer to accept a proposal in a different category from the one you have chosen.
• All abstracts should cite relevant literature and supporting information (citations and references are not included in the word count).
• You should indicate the intended category for your proposal in the subject line: ‘POSTER’, ‘SHORT’, ‘LONG’, ‘PANEL’, ‘WORKSHOP’.

Registering for DHA2021

Full details on how to register for DHA2021 will be available on the conference web site soon, with our aim being to make participation as economical as possible.

Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

To participate in the conference you must be a member of aaDH or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference.

Please read the whole page before you click the ‘membership’ link as the Oxford University Press website which you will be directed to can be a bit confusing.

DHA2021 Call for Proposals (revised)

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) is pleased to invite proposals for DHA2021 (our COVID-delayed conference formerly known as DHA2020).

DHA2021 will be a virtual conference running from 22-25 November 2021 (New Zealand time zone).

Proposals from any country will be considered, but conference participants will need to be members of aaDH, or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference. Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

This call for proposals closes on 27 August 2021.

Please email proposals to: dha2020@canterbury.ac.nz.

The DHA2021 conference theme is ‘Ka Renarena Te Taukaea / Creating Communities’. This theme invites close examination of what connects DH scholars and practitioners to each other and to communities. We welcome a strong local focus on expanding the ways to develop and interconnect research activities within and beyond the Digital Humanities in Australasia and the Pacific. Given the extreme events our region has been experiencing – including terrorist hate crimes, pandemic disruption, and the ongoing environmental catastrophe – it also seems timely to think carefully and courageously about the role DH might play in creating communities capable of leading and contributing meaningfully to global conversations about a safe, equitable’ and sustainable future.

We hope DHA2021 will focus on how digital technologies can not only create connections but support diversity, creativity, community building, wellbeing, and resilience in a world of rapidly evolving challenges. We believe it is a strength of our evolving discipline that DH is constantly revising and renewing its connections with others, often acting as an institutional, methodological, or discursive link between fields of research, professional practices, and programmes within cultural heritage, and we expect many contributions will reflect this. At the same time, our location in the South Pacific creates a unique opportunity and responsibility to engage DH in rethinking the place of the humanities locally, regionally, and in relation to the major social and environmental challenges we face globally.

Recent years have seen the growth of initiatives that expand DH’s boundaries in areas such as computational humanities, Indigenous and postcolonial studies, spatial humanities, critical making, and infrastructure studies. In short, the breadth of these research and pedagogical interests makes it timely to consider the ways ‘community’ shapes and is shaped by DH.

We invite contributors to address the conference theme through the following sub-topics:

• DH and First Nations and Indigenous communities
• Diversity in DH – ensuring inclusion, promoting varied perspectives, giving marginalised communities a voice
• Regional and global communities – DH scholarship across places and cultures, especially the divides of postcolonial legacies, geopolitical or environmental boundaries
• Social and methodological scales of research in DH:
  • How does DH examine social scales – the personal, the family, the institution, the city;
  • How do these relate to methodological questions such as close vs. distant reading?
• DH as public humanities – how do we communicate humanities research and seek the attention and participation of wider communities with research activities?
• DH within topical issue communities, such as environmental humanities, critical race studies, or countering online extremism
• Communities as objects of study, e.g. online communities, interpretive communities
• DH within event communities, such as DH in post-disaster research
• Collaborations across strongly ‘disciplined’ boundaries or research communities, such as between DH and physical or mathematical sciences
• Research groups and labs as communities
• DH communities within (or across) institutions and between DHers in academic, library, software development and other professional roles.
• Creative and artistic communities: digital art, literature, and creative media as DH practice, and a way to interrogate shared critical and cultural concerns
• Pedagogical communities – teachers + students. The real learning happens through contact with students.
• Any other topic relevant to Digital Humanities in the Australasian / Indo-Pacific / Asian region.

We welcome the following types of contributions, all of which will be able to be delivered virtually:

1. Posters

Posters are intended for presenting work-in-progress as well as demonstrations of digital projects or software. Some version of a poster session will take place during the conference, with presenters available to explain and discuss their work. This may include both traditional A1 print posters, and ‘3-slides, with 3-minute video/audio’ posters for on-line display. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

2. Short papers

Short papers are allocated 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

3. Long papers

Long papers are allocated 25 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research, significantly developed or completed digital projects, or theoretical / methodological advances. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

4. Multi-paper Panels

Panels should bring together three to five papers in order to address a single topic related to the conference theme. The aaDH 2020 Programme Committee adopts the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ (ADHO) commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive global research community, and panel organisers should consider this carefully when selecting panel members. Panel proposals should include a panel abstract of no more than 500 words, in addition to individual paper abstracts of no more than 500 words each. Panel organisers are encouraged to contact the chairs of the aaDH Programme Committee to discuss their proposals in advance. Innovative ideas for virtual or hybrid panels are welcome.

5. Workshops

Workshop proposals may be for half-day, whole-day, or programmed on-line sessions, on any topic relevant to Digital Humanities. These may include discussion and/or computing activities on specific software, tools or programming techniques; DH research methodologies, frameworks or theories; or introductions to specific research problems or domains. These proposals should be no longer than 1500 words, and should include a title, full contact details for all workshop presenters, an outline of the workshop structure, a list of facilities or resources required, and any constraints (such as maximum number of participants, software needed etc.).

Please note the following requirements for all proposals

• Abstracts for posters, short papers, and long papers may be no more than 1000 words (panel and workshop proposals may be longer, as specified above).
• The aaDH Programme Committee may offer to accept a proposal in a different category from the one you have chosen.
• All abstracts should cite relevant literature and supporting information (citations and references are not included in the word count).
• You should indicate the intended category for your proposal in the subject line: ‘POSTER’, ‘SHORT’, ‘LONG’, ‘PANEL’, ‘WORKSHOP’.

Registering for DHA2021

Full details on how to register for DHA2021 will be available on the conference web site soon, with our aim being to make participation as economical as possible.

Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

To participate in the conference you must be a member of aaDH or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference.

Please read the whole page before you click the ‘membership’ link as the Oxford University Press website which you will be directed to can be a bit confusing.

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) is pleased to invite proposals for DHA2021 (our COVID-delayed conference formerly known as DHA2020).

DHA 2021 will take place from 22-25 November 2021. To allow for COVID-19 uncertainty, it will be a hybrid ‘In-person’ / ‘On-line’ conference held simultaneously in the city of Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, and virtually.

This call for proposals closes on 20 August 2021.

Please email proposals to: dha2020@canterbury.ac.nz.

The DHA2021 conference theme is ‘Ka Renarena Te Taukaea / Creating Communities’. This theme invites close examination of what connects DH scholars and practitioners to each other and to communities. We welcome a strong local focus on expanding the ways to develop and interconnect research activities within and beyond the Digital Humanities in Australasia and the Pacific. Given the extreme events our region has been experiencing – including terrorist hate crimes, pandemic disruption, and the ongoing environmental catastrophe – it also seems timely to think carefully and courageously about the role DH might play in creating communities capable of leading and contributing meaningfully to global conversations about a safe, equitable’ and sustainable future.

We hope DHA2021 will focus on how digital technologies can not only create connections but support diversity, creativity, community building, wellbeing, and resilience in a world of rapidly evolving challenges. We believe it is a strength of our evolving discipline that DH is constantly revising and renewing its connections with others, often acting as an institutional, methodological, or discursive link between fields of research, professional practices, and programmes within cultural heritage, and we expect many contributions will reflect this. At the same time, our location in the South Pacific creates a unique opportunity and responsibility to engage DH in rethinking the place of the humanities locally, regionally, and in relation to the major social and environmental challenges we face globally.

Recent years have seen the growth of initiatives that expand DH’s boundaries in areas such as computational humanities, Indigenous and postcolonial studies, spatial humanities, critical making, and infrastructure studies. In short, the breadth of these research and pedagogical interests makes it timely to consider the ways ‘community’ shapes and is shaped by DH.

We invite contributors to address the conference theme through the following sub-topics:

• DH and First Nations and Indigenous communities
• Diversity in DH – ensuring inclusion, promoting varied perspectives, giving marginalised communities a voice
• Regional and global communities – DH scholarship across places and cultures, especially the divides of postcolonial legacies, geopolitical or environmental boundaries
• Social and methodological scales of research in DH:
  • How does DH examine social scales – the personal, the family, the institution, the city;
  • How do these relate to methodological questions such as close vs. distant reading?
• DH as public humanities – how do we communicate humanities research and seek the attention and participation of wider communities with research activities?
• DH within topical issue communities, such as environmental humanities, critical race studies, or countering online extremism
• Communities as objects of study, e.g. online communities, interpretive communities
• DH within event communities, such as DH in post-disaster research
• Collaborations across strongly ‘disciplined’ boundaries or research communities, such as between DH and physical or mathematical sciences
• Research groups and labs as communities
• DH communities within (or across) institutions and between DHers in academic, library, software development and other professional roles.
• Creative and artistic communities: digital art, literature, and creative media as DH practice, and a way to interrogate shared critical and cultural concerns
• Pedagogical communities – teachers + students. The real learning happens through contact with students.
• Any other topic relevant to Digital Humanities in the Australasian / Indo-Pacific / Asian region.

We welcome the following types of contributions, all of which will be able to be delivered either virtually or in-person:

1. Posters

Posters are intended for presenting work-in-progress as well as demonstrations of digital projects or software. Some version of a poster session will take place during the conference, with presenters available to explain and discuss their work. This may include both traditional A1 print posters, and ‘3-slides, with 3-minute video/audio’ posters for on-line display. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

2. Short papers

Short papers are allocated 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

3. Long papers

Long papers are allocated 25 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research, significantly developed or completed digital projects, or theoretical / methodological advances. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

4. Multi-paper Panels

Panels should bring together three to five papers in order to address a single topic related to the conference theme. The aaDH 2020 Programme Committee adopts the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ (ADHO) commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive global research community, and panel organisers should consider this carefully when selecting panel members. Panel proposals should include a panel abstract of no more than 500 words, in addition to individual paper abstracts of no more than 500 words each. Panel organisers are encouraged to contact the chairs of the aaDH Programme Committee to discuss their proposals in advance. Innovative ideas for virtual or hybrid panels are welcome.

5. Workshops

Workshop proposals may be for half-day, whole-day, or programmed on-line sessions, on any topic relevant to Digital Humanities. These may include discussion and/or computing activities on specific software, tools or programming techniques; DH research methodologies, frameworks or theories; or introductions to specific research problems or domains. These proposals should be no longer than 1500 words, and should include a title, full contact details for all workshop presenters, an outline of the workshop structure, a list of facilities or resources required, and any constraints (such as maximum number of participants, software needed etc.).

Please note the following requirements for all proposals

• Abstracts for posters, short papers, and long papers may be no more than 1000 words (panel and workshop proposals may be longer, as specified above).
• The aaDH Programme Committee may offer to accept a proposal in a different category from the one you have chosen.
• All abstracts should cite relevant literature and supporting information (citations and references are not included in the word count)
• You should indicate the intended category for your proposal in the subject line: ‘POSTER’, ‘SHORT’, ‘LONG’, ‘PANEL’, ‘WORKSHOP’ and ‘In-person’ or ‘On-line’

Registering for DHA2021

Full details on how to register for DHA2021 will be available on the conference web site soon, with our aim being to make participation for students and virtual attendees as economical as possible.

To present at the conference, whether virtually or in person, you must be a member of aaDH at the time of the conference. Membership instructions are at https://aadh.au/join/.

Please read the whole page before you click the ‘membership’ link as the Oxford University Press website which you will be directed to can be a bit confusing.

The current executive committee for aaDH is as follows:

President: Associate Professor Rachel Hendery, Western Sydney University
Vice-President: Dr Tully Barnett, Flinders University
Secretary: Dr Simon Musgrave, Monash University
Communications Manager: Dr Tyne Daile Sumner, University of Melbourne
Treasurer: Dr Susan Ford, Australian National University
Member: Dr Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Australian National University
Member: Alexander Ritchie, University of Otago
Member: Professor Shawn Ross, Macquarie University

Congratulations and welcome to our new members and thanks to all!

The 2021 Digital Humanities Australia conference, the biennial conference of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities, was hosted by Canterbury University with the theme “Ka Renarena Te Taukaea | Creating Communities”.

While the quality of the research shared across the whole conference was very high, the conference committee awarded a series of highly commended papers as outlined below:

Caelum Greaves, Ursula Standring Bellugue, Chris Lam from Otago University was Highly Commended for their panel “What are literary games, and why do they matter?’. The conference committee valued the panel’s originality, creativity and high quality presentations.

Katya Krylova, University of Canterbury, was Highly Commended for the paper, “More-Than-Human Tongues: Talking Animals and Their Agencies in Technocultural Networks”

Finn Petrie, Otago University, was Highly Commended for the paper “Houses for Plants by Plants: Making With Plants and Speculations on a Community Biosemiotics”

David Green, Otago University, was Highly Commended for the paper “Fragility and Responsiveness: Bruno’s Thin Skin”

Joshua Black, University of Canterbury, was Highly Commended for the paper “Philosophical Writing in Early New Zealand Newspapers: A Case Study of Corpus Construction from Large Digitised Newspaper Datasets”

Congraulations to these five recipients of a Highly Commended paper or panel award.

Thanks to all presenters whose excellent work made for such a rewarding conference experience. And thanks to the members of the conference committee and aaDH executive committee for engaging in the commended paper process.

A message from Simon Musgrave, aaDH Secretary:

The terms of several members of the aaDH Executive Committee are concluding.

aaDH President Professor Paul Millar announced his decision to step down at the end of the 2021 DHA conference with one year left of his term, and the role has been filled by Associate Professor Rachel Hendery.  The committee thanks Paul Millar for his service to the association.

The Executive Committee, as specified in the Rules of the association, consists of nine members, with the possibility of additional members being co-opted. Such an appointment had been in place, but at this election we will return to the nine-member model.

There are currently six vacancies to be filled with terms starting in 2022:

Vice-President (3 years, 2022-24)
Communications Manager (3 years, 2022-24)

Treasurer (2 years, 2022-23)
1 x Ordinary Member (3 years, 2022-24)

2 x Ordinary Members (2 years, 2022-23)

Nominations for these positions are now open.

The Rules of the association relevant to this process are:

25 Election of officers and ordinary members of the committee

25.1 To be considered valid, nominations of candidates for election as officers of the association or as ordinary members of the committee must be

25.1.1 made to the secretary by electronic transmission; and

25.1.2 transmitted to the secretary not less than 7 days before the date fixed for the holding of the annual elections; and

25.1.3 endorsed by at least one current officer of the association or ordinary member of the committee.

25.2 A candidate may nominate for one or more vacant positions on the committee.

25.3 If insufficient nominations are received to fill all vacancies on the committee, the candidates nominated will be deemed to be elected and further nominations may be received at the annual general meeting.

25.4 If the number of nominations received is equal to the number of vacancies to be filled, the persons nominated shall be deemed to be elected.

25.5 If the number of nominations exceeds the number of vacancies to be filled, a ballot must be held.

In relation to rule 25.1.3, I will endorse the nomination of any member in good standing (in the absence of endorsement from another committee member).

In relation to rule 25.5, if a ballot is necessary, it will be run electronically by OUP. To vote in such an election, it is necessary to be a member of the association in good standing (i.e. a financial member).

Although rule 25.1.2 allows for nominations up to 7 days before the election date, it would greatly assist OUP to have details of as many nominees as possible earlier than that date. In addition to sending your formal nomination to me at Simon.Musgrave@monash.edu, please also send a short candidate’s statement (c150 words) which will be made available online. 

The election will take place between January 31 2022 and February 4 2022; members eligible to vote will receive details from OUP before the election opens. Prospective candidates are welcome to contact Simon Musgrave or Tully Barnett (aaDH communications manager) at any time.

At the end of the successful #DHA2021 – Digital Humanities Australasia, aaDH’s biennial conference – Paul Millar announced the end of his term as President for aaDH after three years of service in the role and the hosting of a supremely successful conference. Millar has one year left on his term and, in accordance with the aaDH’s constitution, the Executive Committee called for nominations to fill the role from within the committee. As a result of this process, Associate Professor Rachel Hendery was elected as the President of aaDH.

Here’s some information about the new President of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities

I am Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University. My background is in linguistics, and I work on language contact and change, particularly in the Pacific, and how new digital tools and techniques allow us to research these in new ways. My research interests include historical linguistics, contact linguistics, typology, mapping, simulation, virtual reality, and data visualisation.

From 2011-2014 I held an Australian Research Council (ARC) postdoctoral fellowship to conduct research on the variety of English spoken on Palmerston Island, in the Cook Islands. I am currently a CI on several further ARC-funded projects: Howitt and Fison’s Archive: Insights into Australian Aboriginal Language, Kinship and Culture’ led by Helen Gardner at Deakin University, Mapping Print; Charting Enlightenment, led by Simon Burrows at Western Sydney University, Waves of Words: Mapping and modelling the history of Australia’s Asia-Pacific ties, and Seeing Yourself in Digital Cultural Heritage, both of which I lead at Western Sydney University.

I am also a member of the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, the Centre of Excellence for Language Dynamics and the Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. I co-lead the Intergener8 Living Lab at Western Sydney University. I am the Treasurer for the Australasian Association of Digital Humanities and the NSW coordinator for the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad.

The aaDH would like to thank Professor Paul Millar for his leadership during difficult times and wishes him well for his well-earned sabbatical.

Deadline extended to 27 September 2021

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) is pleased to invite proposals for posters, short papers, long papers, multi-paper panels and workshops, for DHA2021 (our COVID-delayed conference formerly known as DHA2020).

DHA2021 will be a virtual conference running from 22-25 November 2021 (New Zealand time zone). Proposals from any country will be considered, but conference participants will need to be members of aaDH, or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference. Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

• This call for proposals now closes on 27 September 2021
• Please email proposals to: dha2020@canterbury.ac.nz

The DHA2021 conference theme is “Ka Renarena Te Taukaea / Creating Communities.” This theme invites close examination of what connects DH scholars and practitioners to each other and to communities. We welcome a strong local focus on expanding the ways to develop and interconnect research activities within and beyond the Digital Humanities in Australasia and the Pacific. Given the extreme events our region has been experiencing—including terrorist hate crimes, pandemic disruption and the ongoing environmental catastrophe—it also seems timely to think carefully and courageously about the role DH might play in creating communities capable of leading and contributing meaningfully to global conversations about a safe, equitable and sustainable future. We hope DHA2021 will focus on how digital technologies can not only create connections but support diversity, creativity, community building, wellbeing and resilience in a world of rapidly evolving challenges. We believe it is a strength of our evolving discipline that DH is constantly revising and renewing its connections with others, often acting as an institutional, methodological or discursive link between fields of research, professional practices and programmes within cultural heritage, and we expect many contributions will reflect this. At the same time, our location in the South Pacific creates a unique opportunity and responsibility to engage DH in rethinking the place of the humanities locally, regionally, and in relation to the major social and environmental challenges we face globally.

Recent years have seen the growth of initiatives that expand DH’s boundaries in areas such as computational humanities, Indigenous and postcolonial studies, spatial humanities, critical making and infrastructure studies. In short, the breadth of these research and pedagogical interests makes it timely to consider the ways ‘community’ shapes and is shaped by DH.

We invite contributors to address the conference theme through the following sub-topics:

• DH and First Nations and Indigenous communities
• Diversity in DH – ensuring inclusion, promoting varied perspectives, giving marginalised communities a voice
• Regional and global communities – DH scholarship across places and cultures, especially the divides of postcolonial legacies, geopolitical or environmental boundaries
• Social and methodological scales of research in DH: How does DH examine social scales – the personal, the family, the institution, the city – and how do these relate to methodological questions such as close vs. distant reading?
• DH as public humanities – how do we communicate humanities research and seek the attention and participation of wider communities with research activities?
• DH within topical issue communities, such as environmental humanities, critical race studies, or countering online extremism
• Communities as objects of study, e.g. online communities, interpretive communities
• DH within event communities, such as DH in post-disaster research
• Collaborations across strongly ‘disciplined’ boundaries or research communities, such as between DH and physical or mathematical sciences
• Research groups and labs as communities
• DH communities within (or across) institutions and between DHers in academic, library, software development and other professional roles
• Creative and artistic communities: digital art, literature, and creative media as DH practice, and a way to interrogate shared critical and cultural concerns
• Pedagogical communities – teachers + students. The real learning happens through contact with students
• Any other topic relevant to Digital Humanities in the Australasian / Indo-Pacific / Asian region

We welcome the following types of contribution:

1.  Posters

Posters are intended for presenting work-in-progress as well as demonstrations of digital projects or software. This may include a ‘3-slides, with 3-minute video/audio’ option for on-line display. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

2.  Short papers

Short papers are allocated 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development. Participants may present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

3.  Long papers

Long papers are allocated 25 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research, significantly developed or completed digital projects, or theoretical / methodological advances. Participants may present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

4.  Multi-paper Panels

Panels should bring together three to five papers in order to address a single topic related to the conference theme. The DHA2021 Programme Committee adopts the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ (ADHO) commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive global research community, and panel organisers should consider this carefully when selecting panel members. Panel proposals should include a panel abstract of no more than 500 words, in addition to individual paper abstracts of no more than 500 words each. Panel organisers are encouraged to contact the chairs of the aaDH Programme Committee to discuss their proposals in advance. Innovative ideas for virtual panels are welcome.

5.  Workshops

Workshop proposals will be for programmed on-line sessions, on any topic relevant to the conference theme. These may include discussion and/or computing activities on specific software, tools or programming techniques; DH research methodologies, frameworks or theories; or introductions to specific research problems or domains. These proposals should be no longer than 1500 words, and should include a title, full contact details for all workshop presenters, an outline of the workshop structure, a list of facilities or resources required, and any constraints (such as maximum number of participants, software needed etc.).

Please note the following requirements for all proposals

• Abstracts for posters, short papers, and long papers may be no more than 1000 words (panel and workshop proposals may be longer, as specified above).
  • The aaDH Programme Committee may offer to accept a proposal in a different category from the one you have chosen.
  • All abstracts should cite relevant literature and supporting information (citations and references are not included in the word count)
  • You should indicate the intended category for your proposal in the subject line: “POSTER”, “SHORT”, “LONG”, “PANEL”, “WORKSHOP”

Registering for DHA2021

Full details on how to register for DHA2021 will be available on the conference web site soon, with our aim being to make participation as economical as possible. To participate in the conference you must be a member of aaDH, or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference. Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

NB aaDH membership instructions are at https://aa-dh.org/join/. Please read

the whole page before you click the ‘membership’ link as the Oxford University Press website which you will be directed to can be a bit confusing.

DHA2021 Call For Proposals

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) is pleased to invite proposals for posters, short papers, long papers, multi-paper panels and workshops, for DHA2021 (our COVID-delayed conference formerly known as DHA2020).

DHA2021 will be a virtual conference running from 22-25 November 2021 (New Zealand time zone).

Proposals from any country will be considered, but conference participants will need to be members of aaDH, or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference. Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

This call for proposals closes on 27 August 2021

Please email proposals to: dha2020@canterbury.ac.nz

The DHA2021 conference theme is “Ka Renarena Te Taukaea / Creating Communities.” This theme invites close examination of what connects DH scholars and practitioners to each other and to communities. We welcome a strong local focus on expanding the ways to develop and interconnect research activities within and beyond the Digital Humanities in Australasia and the Pacific. Given the extreme events our region has been experiencing—including terrorist hate crimes, pandemic disruption and the ongoing environmental catastrophe—it also seems timely to think carefully and courageously about the role DH might play in creating communities capable of leading and contributing meaningfully to global conversations about a safe, equitable and sustainable future.

We hope DHA2021 will focus on how digital technologies can not only create connections but support diversity, creativity, community building, wellbeing and resilience in a world of rapidly evolving challenges. We believe it is a strength of our evolving discipline that DH is constantly revising and renewing its connections with others, often acting as an institutional, methodological or discursive link between fields of research, professional practices and programmes within cultural heritage, and we expect many contributions will reflect this. At the same time, our location in the South Pacific creates a unique opportunity and responsibility to engage DH in rethinking the place of the humanities locally, regionally, and in relation to the major social and environmental challenges we face globally.

Recent years have seen the growth of initiatives that expand DH’s boundaries in areas such as computational humanities, Indigenous and postcolonial studies, spatial humanities, critical making and infrastructure studies. In short, the breadth of these research and pedagogical interests makes it timely to consider the ways ‘community’ shapes and is shaped by DH.

We invite contributors to address the conference theme through the following sub-topics:

* DH and First Nations and Indigenous communities

* Diversity in DH – ensuring inclusion, promoting varied perspectives, giving
marginalised communities a voice

* Regional and global communities – DH scholarship across places and cultures, especially the divides of postcolonial legacies, geopolitical or environmental boundaries

* Social and methodological scales of research in DH: How does DH examine social scales – the personal, the family, the institution, the city – and how do these relate to methodological questions such as close vs. distant reading?

* DH as public humanities – how do we communicate humanities research and seek the attention and participation of wider communities with research activities?

* DH within topical issue communities, such as environmental humanities, critical race studies, or countering online extremism

* Communities as objects of study, e.g. online communities, interpretive
communities

* DH within event communities, such as DH in post-disaster research

* Collaborations across strongly ‘disciplined’ boundaries or research communities, such as between DH and physical or mathematical sciences
Research groups and labs as communities

* DH communities within (or across) institutions and between DHers in academic, library, software development and other professional roles

* Creative and artistic communities: digital art, literature, and creative media as DH practice, and a way to interrogate shared critical and cultural concerns

* Pedagogical communities – teachers + students. The real learning happens
through contact with students

* Any other topic relevant to Digital Humanities in the Australasian / Indo-Pacific / Asian region

We welcome the following types of contribution:

1. Posters
Posters are intended for presenting work-in-progress as well as demonstrations of digital projects or software. This may include a ‘3-slides, with 3-minute video/audio’ option for on-line display. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

2. Short papers
Short papers are allocated 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development. Participants may present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

3. Long papers
Long papers are allocated 25 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research, significantly developed or completed digital projects, or theoretical / methodological advances. Participants may present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

4. Multi-paper Panels
Panels should bring together three to five papers in order to address a single topic related to the conference theme. The DHA2021 Programme Committee adopts the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ (ADHO) commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive global research community, and panel organisers should consider this carefully when selecting panel members. Panel proposals should include a panel abstract of no more than 500 words, in addition to individual paper abstracts of no more than 500 words each. Panel organisers are encouraged to contact the chairs of the aaDH Programme Committee to discuss their proposals in advance. Innovative ideas for virtual panels are welcome.

5. Workshops
   Workshop proposals will be for programmed on-line sessions, on any topic relevant to the conference theme. These may include discussion and/or computing activities on specific software, tools or programming techniques; DH research methodologies, frameworks or theories; or introductions to specific research problems or domains. These proposals should be no longer than 1500 words, and should include a title, full contact details for all workshop presenters, an outline of the workshop structure, a list of facilities or resources required, and any constraints (such as maximum number of participants, software needed etc.).

Please note the following requirements for all proposals:
Abstracts for posters, short papers, and long papers may be no more than 1000 words (panel and workshop proposals may be longer, as specified above).

The aaDH Programme Committee may offer to accept a proposal in a different category from the one you have chosen.

All abstracts should cite relevant literature and supporting information (citations and references are not included in the word count)

You should indicate the intended category for your proposal in the subject line: “POSTER”, “SHORT”, “LONG”, “PANEL”, “WORKSHOP”

Registering for DHA2021

Full details on how to register for DHA2021 will be available on the conference web site soon, with our aim being to make participation as economical as possible.

To participate in the conference you must be a member of aaDH, or one of the other constituent organisations belonging to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), at the time of the conference.

Student members of aaDH will not be required to pay a conference fee for participation.

NB aaDH membership instructions are at https://aa-dh.org/join/.

Please read the whole page before you click the ‘membership’ link as the Oxford University Press website which you will be directed to can be a bit confusing.

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) is pleased to invite proposals for DHA2021 (our COVID-delayed conference formerly known as DHA2020).

DHA 2021 will take place from 22-25 November 2021. To allow for COVID-19 uncertainty, it will be a hybrid ‘In-person’ / ‘On-line’ conference held simultaneously in the city of Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, and virtually.

This call for proposals closes on 20 August 2021

Please email proposals to: dha2020@canterbury.ac.nz

The DHA2021 conference theme is “Ka Renarena Te Taukaea / Creating Communities.” This theme invites close examination of what connects DH scholars and practitioners to each other and to communities. We welcome a strong local focus on expanding the ways to develop and interconnect research activities within and beyond the Digital Humanities in Australasia and the Pacific. Given the extreme events our region has been experiencing—including terrorist hate crimes, pandemic disruption and the ongoing environmental catastrophe—it also seems timely to think carefully and courageously about the role DH might play in creating communities capable of leading and contributing meaningfully to global conversations about a safe, equitable and sustainable future. We hope DHA2021 will focus on how digital technologies can not only create connections but support diversity, creativity, community building, wellbeing and resilience in a world of rapidly evolving challenges. We believe it is a strength of our evolving discipline that DH is constantly revising and renewing its connections with others, often acting as an institutional, methodological or discursive link between fields of research, professional practices and programmes within cultural heritage, and we expect many contributions will reflect this. At the same time, our location in the South Pacific creates a unique opportunity and responsibility to engage DH in rethinking the place of the humanities locally, regionally, and in relation to the major social and environmental challenges we face globally.

Recent years have seen the growth of initiatives that expand DH’s boundaries in areas such as computational humanities, Indigenous and postcolonial studies, spatial humanities, critical making and infrastructure studies. In short, the breadth of these research and pedagogical interests makes it timely to consider the ways ‘community’ shapes and is shaped by DH.

We invite contributors to address the conference theme through the following sub-topics:DH and First Nations and Indigenous communities

Diversity in DH – ensuring inclusion, promoting varied perspectives, giving marginalised communities a voice

Regional and global communities – DH scholarship across places and cultures, especially the divides of postcolonial legacies, geopolitical or environmental boundaries

Social and methodological scales of research in DH: How does DH examine social scales – the personal, the family, the institution, the city – and how do these relate to methodological questions such as close vs. distant reading?

DH as public humanities – how do we communicate humanities research and seek the attention and participation of wider communities with research activities?

DH within topical issue communities, such as environmental humanities, critical race studies, or countering online extremism

Communities as objects of study, e.g. online communities, interpretive communities

DH within event communities, such as DH in post-disaster research

Collaborations across strongly ‘disciplined’ boundaries or research communities, such as between DH and physical or mathematical sciences

Research groups and labs as communities

DH communities within (or across) institutions and between DHers in academic, library, software development and other professional roles.

Creative and artistic communities: digital art, literature, and creative media as DH practice, and a way to interrogate shared critical and cultural concerns

Pedagogical communities – teachers + students. The real learning happens through contact with students.

Any other topic relevant to Digital Humanities in the Australasian / Indo-Pacific / Asian region.

We welcome the following types of contributions, all of which will be able to be delivered either virtually or in-person:

1. Posters

Posters are intended for presenting work-in-progress as well as demonstrations of digital projects or software. Some version of a poster session will take place during the conference, with presenters available to explain and discuss their work. This may include both traditional A1 print posters, and ‘3-slides, with 3-minute video/audio’ posters for on-line display. The exact presentation requirements will be advised in due course.

2. Short papers

Short papers are allocated 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

3. Long papers

Long papers are allocated 25 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research, significantly developed or completed digital projects, or theoretical / methodological advances. On-line participants will have the option to present live, or record presentations in advance for delivery during the session time followed by participation in a live Q&A session.

4. Multi-paper Panels

Panels should bring together three to five papers in order to address a single topic related to the conference theme. The aaDH 2020 Programme Committee adopts the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations’ (ADHO) commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive global research community, and panel organisers should consider this carefully when selecting panel members. Panel proposals should include a panel abstract of no more than 500 words, in addition to individual paper abstracts of no more than 500 words each. Panel organisers are encouraged to contact the chairs of the aaDH Programme Committee to discuss their proposals in advance. Innovative ideas for virtual or hybrid panels are welcome.

5. Workshops

Workshop proposals may be for half-day, whole-day, or programmed on-line sessions, on any topic relevant to Digital Humanities. These may include discussion and/or computing activities on specific software, tools or programming techniques; DH research methodologies, frameworks or theories; or introductions to specific research problems or domains. These proposals should be no longer than 1500 words, and should include a title, full contact details for all workshop presenters, an outline of the workshop structure, a list of facilities or resources required, and any constraints (such as maximum number of participants, software needed etc.).

Please note the following requirements for all proposals

Abstracts for posters, short papers, and long papers may be no more than 1000 words (panel and workshop proposals may be longer, as specified above).

The aaDH Programme Committee may offer to accept a proposal in a different category from the one you have chosen.

All abstracts should cite relevant literature and supporting information (citations and references are not included in the word count)

You should indicate the intended category for your proposal in the subject line: “POSTER”, “SHORT”, “LONG”, “PANEL”, “WORKSHOP” and ‘In-person’ or ‘On-line’

Registering for DHA2021

Full details on how to register for DHA2021 will be available on the conference web site soon, with our aim being to make participation for students and virtual attendees as economical as possible. To present at the conference, whether virtually or in person, you must be a member of aaDH at the time of the conference. Membership instructions are at https://aa-dh.org/join/. Please read the whole page before you click the ‘membership’ link as the Oxford University Press website which you will be directed to can be a bit confusing.