Cambridge Digital Humanities course timetable
December 2024
Wed 11 |
Convenor: Dr Estara Arrant (Cambridge University Library) This session is aimed at researchers who have never done any coding before. We will explore basic principles and approaches to navigating and working with code, using the popular programming language Python. Participants will use the Jupyter Notebooks platform to learn how to analyse texts. This will provide participants with a working foundation in the fundamentals of coding in Humanities research. The software we will use is free to download and compatible with most computers, and we will provide support in installation and setup before the class. |
January 2025
Mon 27 |
Convenor: Jacob Forward, CDH Methods Fellow Jacob will offer hands-on experience of a full research pipeline in this methods workshop, from data collection and cleaning to deploying large language models (LLMs) to uncover new insights from our textual sources. The session will cover:
If you don’t have any experience of coding, Jacob hopes to show you just how much you are capable of, and if you have a technical background, you can look forward to pushing the boundaries of your skill. About the convenor: Jacob is a PhD student in the Faculty of History at Cambridge. His research focuses on the discourse of crisis in post-Cold War American politics, specifically the language and metaphors politicians use in connection with terrorism, immigration, natural disasters, and financial shocks. His method involves fine-tuning language models on distinct corpora of political speeches, and then querying the fine-tuned models to augment his discourse analysis. More broadly, his research interests include the dynamic between terrorism and federal authority, the debate over national security and civil liberties since 9/11, the psychology of non-literal language, and the ethics and opportunities of leveraging AI tools for humanities research. Jacob previously read for an MPhil in American History at Cambridge (King’s College), and a BA in History at Oxford (Keble College). He has worked for History and Policy at the Institute for Historical Research and consulted on research projects at the School of Advanced Study. This workshop is part of our Methods Fellowship programme, which develops and delivers innovative teaching in digital methods. You can read more about the programme here and view the complete series of workshops here. |