Trinity College Dublin - Digital Humanities and Culture
Qualification Type : Masters - Degree
Qualification Letters : MPhil
Attendance Options : 1 Year Full-Time OR 2 Years Part-Time
Course Overview/Contact:
What is Digital Humanities? Digital Humanities is a field of study, research, and invention at the intersection of humanities, computing, and information management. It is methodological by nature and multidisciplinary in scope involving the investigation, analysis, synthesis, and presentation of information in electronic form.
Digital humanists not only create digital artefacts, but study how these media affect and are transforming the disciplines in which they are used. The computational tools and methods used in Digital Humanities cut across disciplinary practice to provide shared focal points, such as the preservation and curation of digital data, the aesthetics of the digital (from individual objects to entire worlds), as well as the creation of the born-digital.
Why Take this Course? This M.Phil. provides a platform for a technically innovative research path within the humanities giving students the opportunity to engage with a new and dynamic area of research. It provides them with the technologies, methodologies, and theories for digitally-mediated humanities providing a framework for new and bold research questions to be asked that would have been all but inconceivable a generation ago.
Course Outcomes: Those who complete this course will have specialised IT skills combined with an advanced understanding of how these skills can be applied to a wide variety of digital objects (text, image, audio, and video). It will also provide students with the theories and perspectives central to the field, including the aesthetics implicit in digital creation and migration, best practice in terms of the standards used for a number of data formats, as well as the growing concerns of digital curation and preservation. Through the internship programme students will gain experience working with cultural heritage partners or digital humanities projects.
How is it taught and examined? The taught component of the course begins in September and ends in April. Contact hours depend on the modules you take. Theory-based modules meet for two hours a week; practice based modules typically meet for three hours a week to include lab time. Modules are assessed through a combination of essays, in-class presentations, assignments, and projects (either individual or group), depending on the module. There are no examinations. The supervised dissertation of 15,000-20,000 words is submitted by 31 August.
What qualifications do I need to apply? You should have a good honors degree (at least an upper second, or a GPA of at least 3.3 in any of the disciplines of the humanities). A critical writing sample is also required (3,000-5,000 words). For those shortlisted for the course, there will also be an interview. Applications are also welcome from professionals in the library and cultural heritage sectors. Those already in employment may opt to take the degree over two years: the first year all coursework is taken and the second year the dissertation is written.
All students are required to have their own laptops for this MPhil.
Course Options:
1 year full-time, 2 years part-time
Course Url
www.tcd.ie/English/postgraduate/digital-humanities/
Course Director
Professor Mark Sweetnam
Telephone Number
353-1-896 1111
Course Email
mark.sweetnam@tcd.ie
Next Intake
September 2017
Closing Date
31th May 2017
Graduate Testimonials:
Tony Dolan 2014-15: “For the mature student seeking to widen their perspective or adapt to a different career trajectory, the MPhil Digital Humanities and Culture, gives a grounding in the technologies that are revolutionising learning and education. It does this through introducing practical tools for working with digital texts, specialised tools for visualisations and a general tool-set and theory for technologies relating to the Semantic Web such as linked-data. Many of the concepts were new to me so it took time to assimilate them and to be able to deploy them properly. Even now some months after the completion of the course I’m delighted to discover new ways to apply my new skill-set.”
Eoin Tierney: "I’d recommend this course to anybody with an English background the same as myself. Digital Humanities is a great way of enhancing the skills you’ve already acquired throughout undergrad, and applying them to really current and exciting new fields. As part of this course I had modules in web technologies, programming, databases, and corpus linguistics. The internship and dissertation also proved incredibly useful. Coming out of this Masters then I felt fighting fit. Thanks to the M.Phil in Digital Humanities, my classmates and I are now pursuing jobs in advertising, PR, social media, data analysis, and User Experience Design."
Entry Requirements:
Applicants should have a good honours degree (at least an upper second, GPA of at least 3.3) in any of the disciplines of the humanities. The admissions process will be carried out in two stages. In stage I candidates will apply online and have the opportunity of submitting a sample of their own critical writing (3,000-5,000 words) and a cover letter. Those candidates passing this initial assessment will go onto to stage II that will take the form of interviews (either in person, telephone, video, or skype) which will be arranged by a member of the admissions subcommittee. Taken together, these stages will allow the admissions committee to assess the candidates' general suitability for postgraduate work as well as clarifying my query re on line application]
Applications are also welcome from professionals in the library and cultural heritage sectors. Those already in employment may opt to take the degree over two years: the first year all coursework is taken and the second year the dissertation is written.
