University of Groningen

MA in Communication & Information Studies: Digital Humanities

Do you want to be at the forefront of the digital turn in the humanities? The current information revolution opens up exciting perspectives for research and its applications in society.

This Master's track equips you to look at culture, language, history, or philosophy through the lens of digital methods.

We are witnessing many exciting new trends in information technology. The vast amount of digital data that is available nowadays opens up new research questions and opportunities for real-life applications. This Digital Humanities track offers a systematic way to incorporate information technology in humanities research.

It trains students with a humanities background for the growing number of research and other job opportunities that require the processing of digital information. It reflects on the underlying theory and the impacts on our culture and society. It offers courses for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing humanities data. Finally, you will be skilled to work with professional databases, programming scripts, and statistical tools.

Students who graduated successfully from this program were able to integrate a humanities perspective with computational methods. For instance, the thesis “Tracing Joyce’s notes for Ulysses” (2017) employed automation strategies for the digital representation and for source-tracing of Joyce’s notebooks. Another example is the thesis “Visualizing trade” (2018), in which an analysis of the Baltic trade in the 18th century was done by using visualization applications on the Sound Toll registers. By exploring visualization as a tool, the student was able to implement a Digital Humanities approach to a historical problem not just to identify patterns and analyze them, but also to suggest new interpretations.

Why study this program in Groningen?

• It is the only Digital Humanities Master in the Netherlands
• You learn how to program and how to combine theory and skills in using digital tools
• You get acquainted with new developments in digitization and datafication in culture and society
• You enter a multidisciplinary program that offers opportunities for building on your humanities domain of expertise
• It will give you a head start on the job market

Research

The Digital Humanities masters' program benefits from a strong relationship between teaching and research, and students are encouraged to join an active research project for the writing of their thesis. A good example of this embedding is the thesis 'Effectively Classifying Texts Affectively', which was written in the context of a research project on the role of Spotify in the music industry.