The Digital Arts and Humanities Lab is based in the Faculty of Arts Building (FAB) at the University of Warwick, in the West Midlands of England. The lab creates learning and development opportunities for our community of researchers, teachers, technology specialists, and students. We research new tools and techniques, as well as methods for developing our capabilities.
This is our online journal of activities, interactions, and ideas. The articles are written with an emphasis on rapidly recording and sharing, rather than peer reviewing and tightly managing knowledge. Robert O’Toole coordinates the DAHL activities, writes, and edits this journal.
DAHL Autumn Programme
This Autumn Term the DAHL will provide a full programme of exciting opportunities for staff, students, and alumni. No booking necessary.
- Monday evenings, 5-6, the Virtual Reality club will meet to explore the latest in VR and AR tech and experiences for the Arts and Humanities (we have a range of headsets).
- Wednesday afternoons, 1-2, we have two DAHL Shorts sessions (in the FAB and online), covering topics including digital humanities, artificial intelligence, and online museums.
- Thursday lunchtimes (starting later in 2023), 12-1, DAHL Cafe, you can come along to the FAB Mezzanine for guidance from experts on using technologies in your research, study, and public engagement.
- Digital Humanities Certification for staff and PGR students – participate in 6 DAHL Shorts sessions, do a project to adopt new tools and techniques into practice, and write/record a short reflective account of your experiences with digital humanities.
- DAHL Showcase competition for students will reopen in the Easter vacation – see the 2023 winners.
Latest articles
By describing our digital capabilities more clearly, we can analyse their fit to our needs, critically evaluate their impacts, and creatively respond with improvements, additions, and alternatives.
How far should we go to adapt teaching to the needs of every student?
In this article I consider how we might respond positively and creatively to one student’s seemingly impossible accessibility challenge. We use this as a way to drive innovation for all, rather than simply hurdling an individual problem.
How can we make learning as accessible as possible without reducing its effectiveness?
The question “should I routinely record my lectures?” is a badly posed proxy for the much more important challenge of accessibility. Lectures are most often messy mixtures of different types of learning activity, each of which is better done (for accessibility and effectiveness) in different formats, media and modes. In this article we consider how ...
This week we had DAHL Shorts presentations on Omeka SOmeka S is a next-generation web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online. As a web application, it allows users to publish and exhibitcultural heritage objects, and extend its functionality with themes and... More (a web publishing, content management, and database application built specifically for digital humanities) and Gale Digital Scholar Lab (a sophisticated toolset for using digital archives of scanned texts). In the VR Club we ran a successful experiment with a new workflow for creating augmented reality ...
Developing the next generation of designerly activists
My name is Robert O’Toole. I am a Director of Student Experience for the Arts Faculty at Warwick, and an Associate Professor in arts education. My goal is to create educational opportunities for our students that will develop their collective capabilities for saving the planet and improving our lives.
The Cone of Plausibility is one of ...
Omeka S – a brief introduction
This article was written by James Tripp of the IDG Technology for Research team at Warwick. It provides an overview of the Omeka SOmeka S is a next-generation web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online. As a web application, it allows users to publish and exhibitcultural heritage objects, and extend its functionality with themes and... More platform (available to Warwick researchers) for creating and managing online collection web sites. The team are able to provide advice on Omeka SOmeka S is a next-generation web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online. As a web application, it allows users to publish and exhibitcultural heritage objects, and extend its functionality with themes and... More and many other DH tools and techniques, and ...
Sessions on visualising data online, digital humanities theory, 3D art and sense of place in VR, and an update to Wordpress adding the Zotpress plugin to link to Zotero.
Reflecting on your achievements – a systematic and structured approach
Studies of successful and unsuccessful practioners in many fields show that reflecting on achievements is essential. Often after achieving a goal, or just completing a project without being sure of success, people understandably want to have a break, move on to the next thing. So many opportunities are lost in that way: opportunities to learn, ...
DAHL Shorts sessions this week were: Finding Inspiring and Usable Data Sources (with the Library team), and Mind Mapping and Concept Mapping using MindomoA sophisticated browser-based application for rapidly recording information and ideas (text, links, images, audio, video, files etc.) and organising it into either a spider-diagram layout with a central topic (mind map) or an interconnected web of topics (concept map). Large amounts of information m... More (Robert O’Toole). On Tuesday we also had a great VR Club session, again swimming with sea creatures using the Ocean Drift app from Bangor University.
Sessions this week: Intro to the Digital Humanities Certificate; Sources of Support at Warwick.
Recording available in Teams (membership required).
This term sees the start of the DAHL Shorts series (30 minute sessions) and the Digital Humanities Certificate for staff and PGRs. We’ve had about 30 people register for the certificate, with 25 joining us for the ...