Forging connections: digital humanities in Cambridge and beyond

To launch our month-long focus on digital humanities research, Professor John Rink and Professor Simon Goldhill - Co-Directors of Cambridge's Digital Humanities Network - explain how digital tools are transforming scholarship in Cambridge. Cambridge is well placed to exploit and enhance the transformative potential of digital technologies in the arts and humanities. John Rink and Simon Goldhill Humanities research and the questions underlying it are being radically reshaped by new digital technologies and the connections and insights that they afford. Digital tools have been used for decades to browse library catalogues and to access, collate and disseminate primary and secondary research materials. Many of these tools were produced by 'humanities computing' teams that basically offered support services to academic researchers. But during the past 10 years or so, the field of digital humanities has developed into "a genuinely intellectual endeavour with its own professional practices, rigorous standards, and exciting theoretical explorations," as noted by the literary theorist Katherine Hayles (Duke University). Cambridge is well placed to exploit and enhance the transformative potential of digital technologies in the arts and humanities, and to make a major contribution to the ongoing development of the emergent discipline.