Current Funding Opportunities
- Research Networking
- Fellowships
Please see below for details.
Theme Overview
Digital Transformations aims to exploit the potential of digital technologies to transform research in the arts and humanities and to ensure that arts and humanities research is at the forefront of tackling crucial issues such as intellectual property, cultural memory and identity, and communication and creativity in a digital age. Innovation, creativity and public interest in the arts and humanities has been at the forefront of the development of the digital age. At the same time digital innovation, the on-line revolution, the potential for an ‘infinite archive’ and associated changes to the way both people and organisations interact are opening up new opportunities and challenges for arts and humanities research. There is huge potential to develop new ways of working to enhance access and creativity, but the digital age also raises complex questions of responsibility, identity, privacy, and data security that need to be addressed.
Engineers, computer scientists and developers are providing the infrastructure for these changes but innovation within the arts and humanities will be essential to exploiting their potential to transform methods of organising, interpreting and using knowledge. Arts and humanities research perspectives on issues such as forms of knowledge and perception, modes of reproduction and dissemination and the ways in which society as a whole communicates and uses knowledge will be crucial to understanding the potential, scope, limits and impacts of digital technologies. Probing these research issues will engage a broad range of partners in creative and cultural industries eg theatre companies, national institutions, galleries, publishing, law, and media companies. The results of research into digital transformations will be of significant benefit to individuals, policy makers, business, cultural organisations as well as researchers.
Theme Development
The AHRC has identified Digital Transformations as a priority area. We are at an early stage of scoping out both the focus of our activity and the mechanisms by which any activity will be delivered under this emerging theme. There is also potential to link this theme to current activities to maximise our work in this broad area eg the current RCUK Digital Economy programme (in which AHRC is an active partner).
Based on our initial scoping activities, some ideas for possible research areas are:
The potential and impact of digital change on:
• how we communicate and use knowledge in the context of the ‘infinite archive’, including changes in forms of knowledge and how we conduct research, modes of reproduction and dissemination
• the human implications of the expanded archive, including memory, perception, truth, ethics, and the use of language
• changes in publishing, notions of authorship, intellectual property, the rights and responsibilities of the individual and the state
• the democratisation of scholarship and the globalisation of the knowledge economy
• transformations of disciplines and inter-disciplinarity
• international or ‘at distance’ collaborative working
• questions of access and availability, and new forms of expression, in the creative and performing arts
Further information and opportunities on Digital Transformations will be made available as the theme develops.
Current Funding Opportunities
Research Networking and Fellowships
The AHRC’s Research Networking and Fellowships schemes currently have highlight notices for Digital Transformations in the arts and humanities. Initially, these highlight notices will remain in place until April 2011. Proposals should have arts and humanities research at their core, although collaboration with disciplines or organisations outside the arts and humanities will be welcomed where appropriate.
Whilst the criteria for Research Networking remain the same, the highlight notice builds on the flexibility of the Fellowships scheme to encourage collaborations across disciplinary boundaries e.g. collaborations with teams with expertise in new digital technologies (such as the RCUK Digital Economy research hubs and doctoral training centres), or which enable researchers with particular technological expertise to become embedded within an arts and humanities research team or project.
Further information is available on the highlight notices page.
Updated 5th August 2010