Start date: 1 January 2006
End date: 1 July 2010
Funding programme: Support for e-Research programme
Project website:
http://www.ahessc.ac.uk
Introduction
The Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative is jointly funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The Initiative aims to enable research practitioners to embed the advanced use of ICT in their research and teaching practices. It will also facilitate collaboration across traditional subject and discipline boundaries. The Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre (AHeSSC) forms a critical part of theAHRC-JISC-EPSRC Arts and Humanities E-Science Initiative. The Centre is hosted by King's College London and co-located with the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) and the AHRC ICT Methods Network.
Aims and Objectives
The Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre (AHeSSC) exists to provide support for arts and humanities e-Science projects; to promote the creation, exploration and use of e-Science tools, techniques and methods across all arts and humanities disciplines; and to liaise with the e-Science, e-social science, computing and information sciences to share expertise, knowledge and skills.
The specific objectives are to:
- Support projects funded under the joint AHRC-JISC-EPSRC Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative
- Add value to the e-Science programme by ensuring outputs from the projects are promoted and disseminated as widely as possible
- Advisory and training activities to support the use of e-Science tools, methods and techniques
- Facilitation of interdisciplinary work and the exchange of expertise
- Practical assistance to bring together arts and humanities researchers across disciplines, and with researchers from computer and information sciences
- Outreach and promotional activities to bring the work of the funded projects to a wider audience in order to encourage uptake of e-Science, and the wider e-infrastructure activities provided by JISC
- International liaison activities to enable an exchange of information and knowledge globally in support of a widening agenda for the arts and humanities
Project Methodology
The focus of the project is community engagement and support for the Arts and Humanities in order to integrate them better into the national and international e-Science agenda. AHeSSC works to provide support to Arts and Humanities researcher interested in applying e-Science tools and methodologies to their area of research. We provide web space and online discussion boards and information. AHeSSC attempts to bridge the gap between advanced research in computing and the needs in Arts and Humanities research by providing training as well as support with grant applications to realise research aims. We also represent Arts and Humanities at relevant conference in e-Science and organise workshops and publications to drive forward the Arts and Humanities e-Science agenda.
Implications / Deliverables / Stakeholders
The Arts and Humanities have not, up until now, been served by e-Science developments. This is despite the fact that digital resources in these disciplines have mushroomed over the past decade: the Arts and Humanities Research Council commits roughly half its annual budget to projects which produce some form of digital content, as did its predecessor, the Arts and Humanities Research Board. This burgeoning of digital material, which is often fuzzy, incomplete or inaccessible, brings exactly the kind of challenges which e-Science can address. There are particular challenges for the Arts and Humanities community to work with the Grid and other advanced computing and data technologies that cannot be found at a similar scale in other research areas. Although by now the community may find itself in the position of having access to digital texts, images, moving images or audio materials, a strategy to get the community better involved with these materials has yet to be taken forward.