Digital technologies for research in humanities and social sciences

INVEST Transversal Courses

This cross-curricular course addresses the demand for the commandment of the use of technologies for the research in Humanities in the 21st century. Technology is omnipresent in our society (now more than ever) as a transversal element and it has an impact on the proper knowledge and research on humanities. 

The syllabus of this course aims to help Master students of Humanities and Social Sciences to use technology with research purposes, being applicable to different subdisciplines: Languages, Literature, Art, Cinema, Music, and Education, among others.

The main objective of this programme is to offer an overview of the different fields of the digital humanities: the digital processing and editing of text and images and their application in areas such as literature and art, the use and design of databases for the humanities and social sciences, the knowledge of digital tools for the virtual construction of cultural projects and their development on the web, as well as tools for data processing and visualisation. All this will allow Master students to complement their Undergraduate training and open new perspectives both for academic research and for their future insertion in the labour market where the demand for technological training applied to the humanities is constantly growing.

Participation Mode: This is an online course in which students are expected to work independently on Moodle. As a result, there will be no face-to-face tuition, either synchronous or asynchronous. Part-time students are encouraged to contact the course lecturers within the first two weeks to agree on the adaptation of this course to each particular case.

  • ECTS: 4
  • Total hours: 100
  • Language: English
  • Mode of participation: Online
  • Max participants: 15
  • Course code: INV.TRSVL.13
  • Category: BASIC TECHNOLOGY SKILLS
Prerequisites

Pre-requisites established in the study plan: None.

Recommendations: A level of B2 (CEFR) in English is recommended to do the course.

How To Apply

Contact for registration: M Teresa Ortega Frías - master.internacional@uco.es

Course registration period: From September 12 to October 31, 2025.

1. Theory contents

1. Introduction to Digital Humanities

1.1. What is DH?

1.2. Brief historical overview

2. Digitalization of library holdings and collections

2.1. Digital representations of cultural and historical documents, artefacts and images

2.2. Accessing the special and rare collections

2.3. Textual marking, digital editing and publication resources

2.4. Case studies:

2.4.1. The European Digital Library Foundation

2.4.2.The Gutenberg Project

2.4.3. World Library

3. Data analysis and statistics and visualizing (Knowmetrics)

3.1. Quantitative data analysis: statistics software in Humanities (R, SPSS and Jamovi)

3.2. Qualitative data analysis: Atlas.ti and Kwalitan

3.3 Linguistic corpora and corpus management

3.4. Visualizing knowledge (Poemage, TimeLineJS, Neatline, Genial.ly, X-mind, CmapTools, Wordle)

4. Accessibility to cultural heritage site

4.1. Virtual reality and augmented reality (museums, concerts, archaeological sites, architecture, geographic information systems)

4.2. Making culture accessible to disability groups: Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

5. Managing bibliographical information: search, storage and share of bibliographical

resources

5.1. Mendeley and Endnote

5.2. Zotero and Citavi

5.3. Sharing academic knowledge and projects: Commons in a Box

6. Creativity

6.1. Creating cultural artefacts: music, cinema, arts

6.2. Managing your own ideas: Evernote, Onenote, Liquidtext, Trello, Google Calendar, Companion (Bullet Journaling), Design Thinking

2. Practical contents

The above list of units include both theoretical and practical contents.

Berry, D.M. (2011). The Computational Turn: Thinking about the Digital Humanities. Culture Machine, 12. https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/49813/1/BERRY_2011-THE_COMPUTATIONAL_TURNTHINKING_ ABOUT_THE_DIGITAL_HUMANITIES.pdf

Bulger, M., Meyer, E.T., Flor, G., Terras, M., Wyatt, S., Jirotka, M., Eccles, K., & Madsen, C. (2011). Reinventing research? Information practices in the humanities. Research Information Network. http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/Humanities_Case_Studies_for_screen_2_0.pdf

Burdick, A., Drucker, J., Lunenfeld, P., Presner, T., & Schnapp, J. (2012). Digital Humanities. MIT Press.

Davidson, C. (2008). Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions. PMLA, 123(3), 707-717.

Hockey, S. (2000). Electronic Texts in the Humanities. Oxford University Press.

Hockey, S. (2004). The History of Humanities Computing. In S. Schreibman, R. Siemens, & J. Unsworth (Eds.), Companion to Digital Humanities. Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470999875.ch1

McCarty, W. (2005). Humanities computing. Palgrave.

Pannapacker, W. (December 28, 2009). The MLA and the Digital Humanities.

The Brainstorm Blog: The Chronicle of Higher Education Online. https://www.hastac.org/blogs/nancyholliman/2009/12/30/mla-anddigital- humanities

Presner, T. S., & Johanson, C. (2009). The Promise of Digital Humanities: A White Paper. 1-19. 

http://www.itpb.ucla.edu/documents/2009/PromiseofDigitalHumanities.pdf

Rettinger, A., Lösch, U., Tresp, V., d'Amato, C., & Fanizzi, N. (2012). Mining the Semantic Web. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 24(3). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10618-012-0253-2

Ristoski, P. & Paulheim, H. (2016). Semantic Web in data mining and knowledge discovery: A comprehensive survey. Journal of Web Semantics, 36(January), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2016.01.001

Romero Frías, E. (2014). Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Digitales: una visión introductoria. In E. Romero Frías & M. Sánchez González (eds.), Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Digitales. Técnicas, herramientas y experiencias de e-Research e investigación en colaboración. CAC, Cuadernos Artesanos de Comunicación, 61. http://www.cuadernosartesanos.org/2014/cac61.pdf

Sacco, K.L. (2015). Supporting Digital Humanities for Knowledge Acquisition in Modern Libraries. IGI Global.

Schreibman, S., Siemens, R., & Unsworth, J. (eds.) (2004). A Companion to Digital Humanities. Blackwell. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/

Unsworth, J. (2006). Our cultural Commonwealth: the report of the American Council of learned

societies commission on cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences. American Council of Learned  Societies (ACLS ) . http://www.acls.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/Programs/Our_Cultural_Commonwealth.pdf

Wouters, P., Beaulieu, A., Scharnhorst, A., & Wyatt, S. (2012). Virtual Knowledge. Experimenting in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. MIT Press.

International Associations and Institutions:

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). https://adho.org/

European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH). https://eadh.org

First semester: from November 3, 2025, to February 14, 2026.

Second semester: from March 9, 2026, to June 6, 2026.

Tools /  Percentage

Group or individual globalizing projects 40%

Means of practical execution 30%

Students assignments 30%

Clarifications:

1. 40%: Group or individual globalizing projects (portfolio).

2. 30%: Means of practical execution (practical activities uploaded onto Moodle).

3. 30%: Students' assignments (participation in Moodle forums).

The minimum score students need to obtain in each of these assessment tools is 5 out of 10 so that they can pass the course. This means that students will have to separately pass each assessment tool.

Plagiarism and/or cheating during the performance of any of the assignments carried out during the course will entail instant failure. This also includes the use of any artificial intelligence tools. The professor reserves the right to conduct a personal interview with the students about any of the assignments carried out in the course to clarify originality or any other relevant aspect. Plagiarism constitutes a criminal action that will lead to legal and academic consequences for students according to regulations in the University of Córdoba regarding fraud, cheating and plagiarism, as recognized in the Coexistence Regulations of the University of Córdoba (BOUCO, February 24, 2023), particularly Art. 8, section g; Art. 9, section d; and Art. 11, section 6.

4 - Quality Education

The main objective of this programme is to offer an overview of the different fields of the digital humanities: the digital processing and editing of text and images and their application in areas such as literature and art, the use and design of databases for the humanities and social sciences, the knowledge of digital tools for the virtual construction of cultural projects and their development on the web, as well as tools for data processing and visualisation. All this will allow Master students to complement their Undergraduate training and open new perspectives both for academic research and for their future insertion in the labour market where the demand for technological training applied to the humanities is constantly growing.

Name of the faculty member: M Teresa Ortega Frías - master.internacional@uco.es

Contact for registration: M Teresa Ortega Frías - master.internacional@uco.es

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