biblio: The Pedagogy of Humanities Computing

The support of applied computing for research and the provision of training in the skills of digital scholarship to students and staff in Higher Education in the UK has traditionally been seen as the domain of the university’s central computing services. The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London is exploring an alternative paradigm to this by bringing together scholars, students, librarians, archivists, curators, information scientists and computing professionals to collaborate in Humanities Computing research projects. This environment encourages ideas and information about the creation of digital resources to be shared and discussed between experts in their respective fields. Techniques for the exploitation, use, management and preservation of digital resources in the arts and humanities are developing and evolving from this highly collaborative work.


In addition to the research and digital resource creation the education of new scholars is also a key role of the CCH at King’s. They must be trained to work with the changes that have occurred in their subject disciplines and given the knowledge and expertise to cope with future changes that will inevitably occur. This training is provided through undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Humanities with Applied Computing and a new Masters programme in Digital Culture and Technology. A course in Digital Research Skills is also offered to postgraduate students. The undergraduate programme allows students to combine their chosen discipline with a joint honours in Applied Computing. In addition a half-unit ‘stand-alone’ course is open to all first and second year students in the humanities departments at King’s. A newly established postgraduate course draws in students from a variety of departments within Humanities and introduces them to a wide range of tools and techniques commonly found useful for scholarly work and examines common methodologies. The design, implementation and experiences of delivering these courses has given staff at CCH an opportunity to assess the nature of Humanities Computing in practical and theoretical terms from the viewpoints of the many disciplines and levels of study involved in the courses.