Talk Python To Me #230: Python in digital humanities research
Sep 18, 2019
Cornelius van Litt, a postdoctoral researcher in medieval Islamic philosophy at Utrecht University, dives deep into the intersection of Python and digital humanities. He shares how he applies Python and OpenCV to analyze medieval manuscripts and track intellectual history. Cornelius discusses digitizing collections, detecting ownership stamps, and even creating x-ray-like visuals of text density. He advocates for bridging the technical and humanities fields, emphasizing the importance of programming skills for scholars. Tune in for insights on enhancing manuscript research through modern technology!
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Physical Book Features Become Data
- Digitized manuscript covers reveal measurable physical features like flap angle that can serve as dating clues.
- Automating such measurements across thousands of images yields new comparative evidence for provenance.
Learn Tech Yourself To Bridge Gaps
- Learn programming yourself rather than rely solely on engineers to bridge the humanities–tech divide.
- Aim to occupy the middle ground so you can design questions and implement useful tools directly.
The Centaur: Scholar Who Codes
- Cornelius defines a spectrum of DH roles from pure programmers to hybrids he calls 'centaurs'.
- The centaur — a scholar who codes — is the ideal for sustainable, meaningful digital humanities work.
