Illustration by Andrea Levy for Conrad’s Against Digital Humanities

Many thanks to all that attended the CODAH Symposium last Friday. The event was a success purely based on the talks given by our colleagues, so I am sure you will all join me in giving our thanks to Anna, Dion, Yvonne, Ana-Maria, Sarah, and William for such excellent and thought-provoking provocations on digital culture. The talks plus my introduction are all now available on the CODAH YouTube Channel (make sure to subscribe!).

We tried a bit of research mapping, but it was not very successful! To do this properly, we have set up a Google Form. The purpose of this exercise is to collect all our research interests and map the members of CODAH visually so we will be able to develop collaborations. We will host the final visual mapping tool on the CODAH website.

Following the talks, we held a roundtable discussion of the key issues arising from the morning, with a view to planning the next year of CODAH activities. The following arose from the discussions:

  1. We would like to produce a series of short, TikTok-style video explainers on some key topics in digital culture, digital arts, and the digital humanities. These are to be aimed at a pre-University/school audience but will be useful for students too. If you would like to promote your work in this manner, please let Leighton Evans know.
  2. Much of the discussion revolved around education, and to this end, we decided an event in November would be a good idea around AI, digital technology, and education. As the time of year is very busy and meeting in person can be a challenge, we are proposing a hybrid event on a Wednesday afternoon, 4-6pm, with 3-4 papers and a sizeable roundtable discussion based around questions and prompts provided by members in advance. If you would like to present some work (or even thoughts on matters) then do let Leighton Evans know. We will plan and disseminate information about this event in September.  
  3. The Symposium was seen as a success, so we will repeat this event next year in late June/early July. In addition, an external speaker event in February was suggested. If anyone has any suggestions for a speaker who would bring some value to us as an academic community, please let Leighton Evans know.
  4. We would like the website to become a more dynamic portal for information. With that in mind, if you have anything you would like to go on the website (talks, papers, article briefs, working papers, blog posts – any content) then please email Leighton Evans.

Further to all this, we are inviting members to become part of the CODAH steering group. This is too much just for one person! We plan on having a meeting at least once a semester. Some members of the group are already part of the pre-existing group, but if you are interested, we would love to have you on board.

We hope you all have a great summer, and many thanks for supporting CODAH.