Humanities Data Inquiry

Research Program

HDI uses a multi-method research approach combining ethnographic interviews and participant observation, comparative case analysis, systematic mapping reviews of the literature, historical research, and collaborative engagement with researchers and information professionals.

The project examines how humanities scholars work across diverse disciplinary, institutional, and cultural heritage contexts, and how their practices shape — and are shaped by — the design, governance, and long-term stewardship of research and cultural heritage infrastructure. Rather than asking how researchers should adapt to existing infrastructure, HDI turns the question around, beginning from the premise that the humanities already have robust, if often intuitive, traditions for producing, preserving, and circulating the materials information professionals call “data” — and asking how infrastructure can be built to support them.

University of Lethbridge campus

The research unfolds across three connected strands: a historical strand tracing how editions, transcriptions, facsimiles, and other representations of cultural objects have long been collected and shared — an early, intuitive form of data infrastructure; an ethnographic strand documenting how scholars across fields like literary studies, art history, archaeology, classics, and history work with their materials; and a comparative strand examining how digital collections are designed through collaboration between researchers and infrastructure professionals.

This work contributes to scholarly dialogue on

  • Humanities research practices and data cultures
  • Digital cultural heritage infrastructure
  • Governance, stewardship, and sustainability of digital collections
  • Research data management and policy
  • Cultural data ethics and community authority
  • The broader implications of the digital transformation of the human cultural record

Program Areas

HDI is structured across three overlapping areas of inquiry spanning humanities research practices, infrastructure development, and governance.

2021–2024

Foundations and FAIR Humanities Data

The initial SSHRC Partnership Development Grant focused on the problems and opportunities associated with Open and FAIR humanities data practices, including semantic publication workflows, repository infrastructure, and sustainable dissemination models for humanities and cultural heritage research.

This work examined how humanities “small data” could participate in emerging digital and computational ecosystems without sacrificing interpretive depth, disciplinary specificity, or long-standing scholarly practices.

2025–2029

Humanities Research Practices and Data Ecologies

This area of the project expanded into ethnographic, comparative, and historical study of humanities research practices, data use, and infrastructure design.

Research in this area examines how humanities researchers, information professionals, and cultural institutions conceptualize, manage, and sustain research materials, digital collections, and scholarly infrastructure across diverse disciplinary and organizational settings.

2025–2029

Digital Research and Heritage Infrastructure, Governance, Stewardship, and Policy

This area of the project examines the governance, ethics, sustainability, and long-term stewardship of digital research and cultural heritage infrastructure.

Research focuses on institutional collaboration, infrastructure design, community authority, cultural data ethics, and policy development related to digital heritage and research infrastructure.

Outputs & Collaborations

HDI is conducted in partnership with the Humanities Innovation Lab and the Lethbridge Journal Incubator at the University of Lethbridge, and through collaborations with researchers, cultural institutions, infrastructure organizations, and community partners internationally. Research data is made openly available through established repositories.

Project outputs include

  • Research publications and comparative case studies
  • Digital humanities and cultural heritage projects
  • Infrastructure, governance, and policy frameworks
  • Best-practice and data ethics resources
  • Workshops, presentations, and training materials
  • Open-access and community-oriented digital scholarship initiatives

The work is meant to serve humanities researchers, the information professionals who design research infrastructure, and the institutions, students, and publics who rely on humanities scholarship.

See research outputs