Geographical and linguistic

diversity in the Digital Humanities

............................................................................................................................................................
Isabel Galina Russell
Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico
.......................................................................................................................................
Abstract
Digital Humanities (DH) has come a long way towards establishing itself as a
dynamic and innovative field of study. However, it has been pointed out that the
DH community predominantly comprises scholars from a handful of mainly
Correspondence: English-speaking countries, and a current challenge is achieving a broader inter-
Isabel Galina Russell, nationalization of the DH community. This article provides an overview of the
Centro Cultural, landscape in terms of geo-linguistic diversity, as well as reviewing current DH
Ciudad Universitaria, 04510,
México, DF, México
initiatives to broaden regional and linguistic diversity and identifies some of the
Email: main challenges ahead. The aim of this article is to serve as a benchmark of the
igalina@unam.mx current situation and suggest areas where further research is required.
.................................................................................................................................................................................

have been published.1 All of these point towards

1. Geographical and Linguistic
Diversity in the Digital Humanities
Digital Humanities (DH) has come a long way to-
wards establishing itself as a recognizable and valued
area of academic activity. Pannapacker’s much cited
comment that ‘Digital Humanities is the Next Big
Thing’ (Pannapacker, 2009) is just the beginning of
an array of articles, both within the academic and
general press, about DH and its importance. Over
the past few years, many DH centres and depart-
ments together with postgraduate courses have
been created; the annual International DH
Conference grows continuously and there are a
number of other DH-related conferences, meetings,
and events around the world. In the USA, the
National Endowment for the Humanities created
the Office of Digital Humanities, an important
institutionalized recognition that DH projects are
relevant and viable, and the term is rapidly becom-
ing accepted by other funding agencies. In addition
to the long-standing DH journals, in recent times, a
number of books specifically describing the field
an academic, networked, and productive commu-
nity of scholars engaged in similar activities.
As the community has grown, so has the amount
of attention it receives and with it has come an
increasing pressure to define exactly what is meant
by the term Digital Humanities. Although historic-
ally the DH community has grappled with a defin-
ition, over the past few years there have been more
vocal disagreements as we struggle to define what
DH ‘is’ and what DH ‘does’. As Gold writes in his
introduction to ‘Debates in the DH’, this is ‘a field
in the midst of growing pains as its adherents
expand from a small circle of like-minded scholars
to a more heterogeneous set of practitioners who
sometimes ask more disruptive questions’ (Gold,
2012).
Coupled with the problem of defining DH (what
we ‘are’ and what we ‘do’) there is now an add-
itional and ineludible problem: ‘who is ‘‘we’’?’
Traditionally, DH has been built on a strong sense
of community and much work over the past few
decades has been done by enthusiastic and generous
scholars. Collaboration and cooperation are seen as

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I. Galina Russell
specific traits of DH that differentiate it from the
more ‘lone-scholar’ traditional humanist. It seems
that openness and a desire to work with others is
fundamental to the way the DH community repre-
sents itself (Manifesto for the DH, 2010; Scheinfeldt,
2012; Spiro, 2012). Yet, over the past few years the
community has become aware that it is not as open
and universal as it had initially perceived itself. The
issue had been mentioned before, but it is only in
the past few years with an increasing number of
debates on defining DH that it has become a more
mainstream discussion. It has been pointed out that
the DH community is predominantly made up of
white scholars from a handful of mainly English-
speaking countries. Issues related to ethnicity,
gender, race, language, and class have begun to
crop up more frequently on mainstream DH chan-
nels. Additionally, some have argued that DH has
concentrated primarily on building and making, but
rarely stopped to reflect from a cultural–theoretical
perspective on the resources and tools that are being
created (Liu, 2011, 2012; Fiormonte, 2012;
McPherson, 2012; Presner, Forthcoming). As put
by Higgin (2010), ‘These efforts are often performed
under the guiding ethos of collaboration which
often becomes an uncritical stand-in for empty pol-
itics of access and equity (. . .) DH does have its
strong suits: e.g. the ethics of copyright, privacy
and open source, but as an intellectual community
its position on race, gender, class, and the environ-
ment are undertheorized and underimplemented
even if many practitioners think otherwise’.
These are complex and important issues that
have to be addressed on many different levels. As
made clear by the extensive and complex discussion
evoked by the open thread ‘The Digital Humanities
as a Historical ‘‘Refuge’’ from Race/Class/Gender/
Sexuality/Disability?’ (Koh and Risam, 2013) there
are not only many overlapping layers but also
different approaches, conditioned by disciplinary
differences and geopolitical histories. For example,
as the conversation veered towards aspects of race
and gender, it was pointed out that the debate was
mainly US-orientated and in itself was exclusive of
other national contexts. Notions of exclusion and
inclusion, as well as what is considered a ‘minority’,
whether an ethnic group, language, or gender, will
308 Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
vary and even more so when immersed in a
global environment. As DH moves forward in ad-
dressing these issues, it will have to conceptualize
them on many different levels and from different
standpoints.
The DH community has expressed in different
ways concern for broadening participation and is
actively seeking ways of becoming more inclusive.
One of the most obvious ways of becoming more
inclusive is to seek to incorporate scholars from a
broader range of countries and linguistic back-
grounds than are currently represented. But how
does one go about finding DH practitioners that
have been excluded? Moreover, how do you find
people that do not necessarily identify with DH or
even know that DH exists? In this article, I attempt
to define the current landscape in terms of geo-
linguistic diversity, review the initiatives that are
underway, and identify some of the main challenges.
2. Geographic and Linguistic
Diversity in the DH
As previously mentioned, the DH international
community is apparently constituted mainly by
scholars from the USA, Canada, and the UK, with
some participation from other European countries.
There is a general perception of an Anglo–American
dominance and English as the main language. This
can be gleaned as general impressions that have been
formed from observations of the DH community’s
main communication channels, publications, meet-
ings, postgraduate courses, and constitutive bodies.
However, currently there is little known data avail-
able to prove it, and many of these observations are
anecdotal and empirical. Although there is general
consensus of these perceptions, the lack of more
precise information hampers the possibility of ef-
fective benchmarking in order to propose effective
solutions.
In 2006, Terras described the nature of the then
called Humanities Computing field (Terras, 2006).
Among many other aspects, she analysed who was
part of this community. Her findings were based on
the membership of associations, journals, and dis-
cussion groups as well as the participants of the

2005 Association for Computers and the
Humanities/Association for Literary and Linguistic
Computing (ACH/ALLC) meeting (now the DH
international conference). Terras reports the exist-
ence of a small, but engaged, community that has,
since then, grown considerably. Information about
geographic origin indicated only in the data from
the conference showed that the 250 presenters came
from fifteen different countries. Furthermore, there
was a strong predominance from the USA, Canada,
and the UK with practically all the remaining pre-
senters being from European countries. There was
no participation from Latin America, while Africa
had one participant and Asia had less than five
participants—all from Japan. At the time, Terras
suggested that both language and access to compu-
tational technologies may explain the absence of
presenters from other countries.
In 2011, another attempt at collecting data on the
growth of DH was again done by Terras, resulting in
the infographic ‘Quantifying Digital Humanities’
(Terras, 2011b). Not all the data are broken down
by country but a look at the blog post where she
originally collected the data provides some add-
itional information (Terras, 2011a). For example,
data from LLC (Literary and Linguistic
Computing) indicate that the majority of submis-
sions received are from Europe, the USA, and
Canada; however, they also suggest a potential
growth in Latin America, the Arab world, Africa,
and Australia. Similarly, data from the 2011 DH
conference (Meeks, 2011) show again a marked pre-
dominance of attendees from the USA, Canada, and
Europe and, this time, a more notable participation
from Latin America (Mexico in particular), the Arab
world, Japan, and Australia. The comparison reveals
similar tendencies although it is difficult to reach
any definite conclusions. Data from CenterNet list
114 centres in twenty-four countries (Terras,
2011b), with the majority in the USA (44), followed
by the UK (14), Canada (11), and the rest of Europe
(25). Terras also provides information related to
followers of several Twitter accounts, THATCamp
users, subscribers to the Humanist, TEI answers,
Digital Medievalist, and DH Answers mailing lists,
and members of DH associations. None of these
data are broken down by country, but further
Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
Geographical and linguistic diversity in DH
analysis could be done in order to provide a fuller
picture of the state of global participation in these
particular DH initiatives. Terras does provide access
statistics to main DH resources: DH Answers with
access from 164 countries and DHQuarterly from
137. This shows a much wider range of countries
than in any other of the data examined before. This
could suggest that there are DH practitioners in
other regions of the world interested in the subject
but not necessarily contributing with data about
their production.
One of the main issues is where the data come
from. Terras infographic focuses mainly on what
could be considered mainstream DH channels that
are produced and managed in their majority by
people or institutions found in the USA, Canada,
or the UK. Terras herself points out that her method
for collecting data was through volunteers and she
included only what she received. What is interesting
in itself is that this strong USA/UK bias can be a
product of two things: a reflection on the fact that
there are, indeed, more DH scholars and DH pro-
duction from these parts of the world and, secondly,
that DH participation from other regions, although
smaller, is underrepresented in the mainstream dis-
cussion. The questions then are why are these data
not available and how could they be included?
In his article ‘Towards a Cultural Critique of the
Digital Humanities’, Fiormonte (2012) points out
this particular issue when answering the question
‘Is there a non Anglo-American DH and if so,
what are its characteristics?’ Fiormonte argues that
the Italian Informatica Umanistica has a long trad-
ition and history but that this has been largely
ignored by the dominant Anglo-American hegem-
ony in the field. ‘But from the point of view of the
scientific results, research projects, and institutional
presence, Informatica Umanistica, like most of the
‘‘other’’ DH practiced in the world, practically
doesn’t exist’ (Fiormonte, 2012, p. 2). In a footnote
he adds that little information on the history is
available in English.
Claverte (2013) acknowledges the same Anglo-
American predominance but notes that this is not
necessarily representative of his experience with
French-speaking DH. Claverte describes a very
active DH community with great representation in
309
I. Galina Russell
THATCamp Paris as well as a distribution list with
over 500 subscribers in just the first few weeks. He
adds that his knowledge of other countries such as
Germany and Italy reflect something similar. So why
then this discrepancy ‘between my (and a lot of
colleagues) experience of French DH speaking and
the image of a field that is supposed to be mainly
English speaking?’ Clavert proposed that DH, al-
though revolutionary and new, is structured much
in the same way as other academic fields, with
English as the predominant language. Therefore, a
lack of publications and communications in English
leads to invisibility on the mainstream channels.
Dacos (2013) also analyses the geopolitical situ-
ation. He presents the results of the survey ‘Who are
you, Digital Humanist?’ created at THATCamp
Luxemburg and disseminated at DH Hamburg
2012. Notably, Dacos reports the existence of geo-
graphic and linguistic diversity within the DH re-
spondent community and, significantly, the contrast
between the marginality of English as a first lan-
guage and its predominance as a second language
of Digital Humanists. The make-up of these results,
however, varies greatly from other data. Dacos regis-
tered fifty-five countries, although only twenty-
seven participate with more than four members.
France is dominant (a fact that he attributes to
where the survey was launched from), Germany is
well represented (the conference was held in
Hamburg), and interestingly, countries such as
Spain and Argentina figure more prominently
than in other data. It is important to note that this
survey was available in four languages (French,
Spanish, English, and German), which may further
explain the linguistic and geographic diversity of the
respondents. In this study, Latin America emerges as
a region more involved with the DH community.
Dacos notes that there is no representation from
Africa or Asia and concludes that either they do
not identify or recognize the DH category or they
simply did not receive the survey.
In parallel, Dacos’ article also presents results that
show that the decision-makers (organizers and re-
viewers of the DH conference) are predominantly
from the USA, Canada, and Europe (and specifically
the UK). He proposes a Digital Humanities Decision
Power indicator that measures a country not by the
310 Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
number of participants in the survey but by the
number of Digital Humanists in positions of power
and decision-making (in this particular case as re-
viewers for the DH conference). The UK, Ireland,
USA, Canada, and Australia are the five leading
countries in this area. Fiormonte notes a similar ten-
dency in a table that contributes information about
some of the main DH organizations (ACH, ALLC,
CenterNet, Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ),
Society for Digital Humanities-Société pour l’Étude
des Médias Interactifs (SDH-SEMI), and Text
Encoding Initiative (TEI)) where the USA, Canada,
and the UK hold the larger number of memberships
and leadership positions of DH organizations
(Fiormonte, 2012: Table 1, p. 6).
It is difficult to reach any conclusions from this
limited amount of available data, but some tenden-
cies appear to emerge. The first is the existence of DH
outside the Anglo-American tradition which is cur-
rently underrepresented. The second is a confirmed
dominance of the UK, USA, and Canada in the cre-
ation of the DH community, including the main gov-
erning bodies. However, it is important to bear in
mind that the sources reviewed are those available
in English. A more ample literature review that in-
cludes more languages would be necessary to revert
these tendencies. What is important to note, how-
ever, is that just because DH work is not available in
English does not mean that it does not exist, which
seems to be the assumption some of these DH studies
reach. Any comprehensive study of the DH commu-
nity would necessarily need to include information
available in other languages. This does, however,
point to the existence of a much broader community
that could, with the right initiatives, be included.
3 Towards a More Global DH
Community
Undoubtedly in order to modify a particular cir-
cumstance it must first be acknowledged, and sec-
ondly, evaluated in order to determine what changes
can be made and how. Whilst recognizing that there
are reasons why a group in power will want to
maintain its hegemony it is still possible, as pro-
posed by Fiormonte to ‘acknowledge a situation,

Table 1 Recently formed DH international associations
Date formed Name of association
March 2011 Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH)
2011 Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (JADH)
March 2011 Associaziones per l’Informatica Umanistica
e la Cultura Digitale
June 2011 Red de Humanidades Digitales (RedHD)
November 2011 Humanidades Digitales Hispánicas (HDH)
July 2012 Digital Humanities Deutschland (DHD)
October 2013 Associação das Humanidades Digitais (AHDig)
November 2013 Asociación de Humanidades Digitales en Argentina (HDA)
November 2013 Ruach Digitalit—Digital Humanities Israel
evaluating it for itself and perhaps suggesting that a
different model is possible’ (Fiormonte, 2012, p. 2).
Over the past few years there has been a growing
tendency within the DH community to acknow-
ledge this situation and to begin to take steps to-
wards finding ways of modifying it. A number of
initiatives both from within the mainstream DH
community as well as the inclusion of ‘other’ DH
projects have been generating what looks like sig-
nificant modifications in the DH community in
terms of global inclusiveness. It is still too early to
define what impact these may be having, but it is
important to benchmark them so they may then
serve as a baseline for studies that must be con-
ducted in the following years. These are divided
into the following broad sections: new international
organizations; Digital Humanities International
conference; Association of Digital Humanities
Organizations (ADHO) initiatives; discussion lists
and Twitter; finding projects and people, and
other events.
3.1 New international organizations
Over the past few years there has been a notable
increase in the amount of DH organizations created
in several parts of the world. Table 1 shows a list of
the associations formed. Data were collected from
the associations’ websites.
Efforts have been made to include all associ-
ations, but this list is not necessarily comprehensive.
Additionally, if the current growth tendency con-
tinues, any published list will rapidly become obso-
lete. The aim is to document the growth tendency.
Additionally, what we can observe is the emergence
Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
Geographical and linguistic diversity in DH
Additional comments
Member of ADHO
Member of ADHO
Date of official creation but as a network has functioned
for much longer
Founded in Mexico and focuses on Spanish speaking DH and
the Latin American region.
Founded in Spain and focuses on Spanish speaking DH.
Founded in Germany and focuses on German speaking DH
Founded in Brazil and focuses on Portuguese speaking DH
Founded in Argentina and promotes DH in this country
Founded in Israel and aims for the promotion of DH in this country
of two types of associations: those that focus on DH
in a particular language (for example, DHD in
German or AHDig in Portuguese), whilst others
focus on countries (such as Israel or Argentina) or
regions (such as RedHD). Out of these associations,
only two currently belong to ADHO and it will be
interesting to see how other newer associations will
choose to interact with ADHO or its constituent
members. Within ADHO itself, it is important to
note that ALLC recently changed its name to
European Association for Digital Humanities
(EADH), choosing to take a regional approach to
its mission by defining it as ‘representing the
European Digital Humanities across all disciplines’.
Currently, only ACH, together with CenterNet, take
a non-regional approach, although ACH is trad-
itionally associated with US membership. This
seems to be a reflection of a growing global DH
community in which geographic location and lan-
guage begin to figure more predominantly.
3.2 DH international conference
The ADHO organizes and sponsors the annual DH
conference since 1990, although the history of
Humanities Computing conferences go further
back with the meetings organized by the ALLC
and ACH. A concentrated effort has been made by
the organizers to include participants from a
broader range of countries. One initiative has been
to make the Call for Papers (CfP) available in lan-
guages other than English. For DH10, the call was
available in five languages (Spanish, Greek,
Hungarian, French, and Italian). The practice has
been growing consistently with the call available in
311
I. Galina Russell
twenty-three languages for DH14. Translations have
all been done by volunteers from the DH commu-
nity, a fact that demonstrates both an interest in
participation as well as the large number of lan-
guages spoken by DH practitioners. However,
what is still not known is whether the CfP’s avail-
ability in other languages actually increases the
number of proposals submitted either in other lan-
guages or at least from countries where a given lan-
guage is spoken. This would be an interesting study
to try and evaluate the effectiveness of this
mechanism.
Another approach has been to look for new host-
ing countries. Traditionally DH has been held on
alternate years either in Canada or the USA and
then in a European country. DH15 will be held
for the first time outside this region in Sydney,
Australia. It will be interesting to note if this leads
to, for example, increased participation from Asian
countries, such as Japan, which has a history of DH
but does not figure frequently on the DH stage
(Nagasaki and Muller, 2012). Additionally, the
ADHO is interested in receiving bids from other
countries and it will be interesting to see if there
are changes in the participant make-up if the con-
ference is held in, say for example, Brazil or Mexico.
3.3 Association of Digital Humanities
Organizations
The ADHO hosts a number of working groups and
special interest groups of which a couple are par-
ticularly relevant to geo-linguistic diversity: the
standing committee on Multilinguism and
MultiCulturalism (MLMC) and the Global
Outlook (GO:DH) special interest group.
The MLMC was founded in 2005, although talks
were started in 2002.2 It ‘is charged with developing
and promoting policies in ADHO and its constitu-
ent organizations that will help them to become
more linguistically and culturally inclusive in gen-
eral terms, and especially in the areas where linguis-
tic and cultural matters play a role’, and has
representatives from the constituent organizations,
journals, and four additional members. The MLMC
seeks to promote the value of the multilingual and
multicultural character of the community and to
take different academic cultures and norms into
312 Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
account. The CfP in multiple languages is a practical
example of this work.
GO::DH is a recently formed special interest
group whose purpose is to address barriers that
hinder communication and collaboration among
researchers and students of the Digital Arts,
Humanities, and Cultural Heritage sectors across
and between high-, mid-, and low-income econo-
mies. GO::DH has concentrated on building a
multilingual website, launched a subscription list,
organized a Global Essay Prize which received
papers in five different languages, and established
five working groups that focus on DH around the
world (Around DH, THATCamp Caribe,
Translation commons, Minimal computing, and
Rewriting Wikipedia). What is important to note
is that GO::DH does not define itself as an aid or
outreach programme, but rather its core activities
are Discovery, Community-Building, Research, and
Advocacy recognizing that work is being done in
many countries and finding ways of complementing
strengths, interests, and abilities (Global Outlook
Digital Humanities, 2013).
3.4 Discussion lists and Twitter
The DH community has traditionally used discus-
sion lists as important means of communication.
Humanist, TEI-L, and Digital Medievalist, for ex-
ample, are all mentioned in ‘Quantifying Digital
Humanities’ (Terras, 2011b). With the growth of
DH regional and local groups it is important to
note the creation of other discussion lists that in-
clude new members or topics. GO::DH has a dis-
cussion list with currently 250 members. RedHD
created one mainly in Spanish with currently ninety
subscribers. The French DH discussion list currently
lists 646 subscribers. The Italian Associaziones di
Informatica Umanistica e Cultura Digitale
(AIUCD-L) has over 100 subscribers. There are
probably many others in various languages or focus-
ing on regional communities. Additionally these
channels can be used for communication with DH
practitioners that do not necessarily subscribe to the
more predominantly Anglo-American channels.
Twitter is also frequently used for communica-
tion within the DH community. Terras (2011b)
includes data about Twitter following in her

infographic, specifically @DHNow, @DHQuarterly,
and @LLCJournal. Currently these have a following
of 11,541, 688, and 1,079, respectively. Recently,
new Twitter accounts have been created that focus
on other issues and communities, for example,
@globaloutlookDH with 434 and @Red_HD with
507. There are most likely many other Twitter
accounts covering not just different DH subject
interests but also particular geographical or linguis-
tic areas. What is interesting to note is that although
these are newly created accounts they have signifi-
cant following groups and demonstrate an interest
in the subject. In Terras’ numbers from her 2011
infographic, followers of the previously mentioned
Twitter accounts were 2,794, 688, and 513 that
clearly show how quickly these numbers can
change in the matter of a couple of years.
3.5 Finding projects and people
Although the traditional communication channels
have their purposes, one of their problems, as al-
ready discussed, is that other DH communities that
do not necessarily use these channels, either because
they are in English or for other reasons, are under-
represented. Some efforts have been made to look
for DH projects outside the mainstream channels.
For example, Around DH in 80 days seeks to docu-
ment and describe DH projects around the globe
and in particular to bring attention to digital schol-
arship outside of Canada, Europe, the USA, and
Japan. As described ‘AroundDH can be read not
only as a tour of the globe, but also as a dance
around the periphery of DH’.3 The project is cur-
rently underway and should be reporting results in
2014.
Another example is the RedHD database of DH
projects which currently offers detailed information
of forty-five projects in Mexico alone. The project is
in process and currently proactive in finding DH
projects mainly by searching institutional websites
and recommendations. Although this approach is
not sustainable in the long run, it has been very
effective in building a DH community previously
inexistent in Mexico (Galina and Priani, 2011).
The aim is to continue to document projects from
other regions in Latin America using the same
methodology.
Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
Geographical and linguistic diversity in DH
Dı́aDH4 which took place in June 2011 was cre-
ated to identify and bring together the work of
Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking digital humanists
in Europe and Latin America. The proposal of
Dı́aDH was based on DayofDH, but the
project aimed to find out not just what these
digital humanists did but also to identify who and
where they were. Results from this project are
currently in process. One initial result is the cre-
ation of MapaHD, a tool that maps the DH in
Spanish and Portuguese (Ortega and Gutierrez,
forthcomimg).
3.6 Other events
Although numerous important events outside of the
annual DH international conference are quite fre-
quent in the USA, Canada, the UK, and some
European countries, other regions of the world
with little registered DH event activity have begun
hosting DH-related events. For example, the 1er
Encuentro de Humanistas Digitales was held in
Mexico City in May 2011. The second meeting is
planned for May 2014 and will be held in conjunc-
tion with GO::DH. In July 2013 the 1er Congreso
Internacional de la HDH was held in Coruña, Spain,
bringing together once again the Spanish-speaking
DH community. The JADH had their third confer-
ence in Kyoto this year, and the I Seminário
Internacional em Humanidades Digitais was held
in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in October 2013.
A special mention should be made of
THATCamp events which have proliferated not
only in the well-represented DH countries but also
in a number of other regions of the world. For ex-
ample, there have been four THATCamps organized
in Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, one
in South America, eight in Australia and New
Zealand, and twenty in Europe. Other regions
such as Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have not
hosted any THATCamp events.5 This seems to be a
useful model for introducing DH to particular com-
munities, but again a detailed study would help to
see if and how this is being achieved. It is known
that several initiatives, such as Who are you, digital
humanist?, GO::DH, Association of Argentine DH,
to name a few, began in THATCamps.
313
I. Galina Russell
4 Conclusions
As mentioned before, there is little data available,
but some inferences may be made from the back-
ground described. A forefront issue for inclusiveness
is language. In this sense, DH is currently a reflec-
tion of the way academia works in general with
English as the predominant language and with a
few countries having a far larger representation
and research output. However, there are some indi-
cators that there is an interest by the main DH or-
ganizations of proposing alternative models that
can, if not solve, at least alleviate this phenomenon.
There are two approaches: the first is making
more information available in other languages and
the second is making English, used as the lingua
franca, more accessible to non-native speakers. For
the DH conference we have seen how the CfP is now
available and distributed in several languages.
GO::DH is an example of a discussions list where
invitations and calls for participation are produced
in more than one language. Some DH organizations
have begun to look into translating parts of their
websites, using the same volunteer system so effect-
ive with the conference.
The second, making English more accessible to
non-native speakers requires awareness from native
English speakers of the advantages of communicat-
ing professionally in their mother tongue. For scho-
lars who write in English as a second language, the
process is more time-consuming and participation
for example in a discussion list takes longer to write
and explain their ideas, whilst a native speaker can
‘fire off’ comments more quickly and in a more agile
manner. The same applies for presentations and
asking questions in front of a large group.
Participation is more difficult when you are
unsure in your language skills. GO::DH held an
interesting discussion on developing a few rules
that would make discussion on an international
list in English easier for all involved. This included
such basic things as trying to avoid acronyms, col-
loquial expressions, being careful with sarcasm and
irony, as this can lead to misunderstandings, and
remembering to offer additional information that
helps with context. In short, awareness and a con-
sideration for the people you are conversing with
314 Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
(Fiormonte, 2013). Dacos proposes the use of
‘globish’, a more rudimentary and rustic version
of English that would allow native and non-native
English speakers to communicate on more equal
terms. For example, in conferences, native English
speakers would be careful to avoid complex inter-
ventions or humour that requires a finer grasp of
the language and would speak slowly and clearly in
recognition that not everyone in the audience is a
native English speaker (Dacos, 2013).
Another interesting recent phenomenon has been
the creation of DH associations that organize them-
selves both regionally or linguistically. It will be
interesting to see how these associations can begin
to both identify and articulate other aspects of DH
that are currently not included in mainstream dis-
cussions. In particular how the relationship and
communication between the ADHO and the ever-
growing global DH community will be formed.
In her 2006 article, Terras mentioned that the
lack of DH participation from other countries
could be due to language or to computer infrastruc-
ture (Terras, 2006). The subject of computing power
or infrastructure could possibly initially strike as
something important. However, there is little infor-
mation about this. For example, DH work in
Mexico found that access to computing infrastruc-
ture was not a problem (Galina and Priani, 2011).
However, to varying degrees, certain parts of the
world may not have the kind of connectivity avail-
able in other countries. From simple things like
trying to follow and participate in cutting-edge dis-
cussions on Twitter with a less than reliable Wi-Fi
connection to procuring hardware and software to
develop large-scale projects are of course important
issues. It would be interesting to study how this
could be an obstacle for some countries, especially
particularly poor ones. Others have also argued that
even though a lot of software is available open
source and free, these do incorporate cultural as-
sumptions that the DH community must address
(McPherson, 2012). Much work has been done in
other areas on subjects related to the digital divide
and little of this has been incorporated into DH
literature. The lack of technology can help us
think about DH from a different perspective.
Instead of seeing what we can do with a lot of

computing power and technology, what happens if
we turn this around and see what we can do with a
little? It pushes the limits of our creativity and our
capacity to solve problems and distances us from the
latest state-of-the-art technology with which we are
sometimes blinded. An example of this is ‘Minimal
computing’, a project that is asking questions such
as what are the best practices for application con-
struction in order to maximize availability, decrease
obsolescence and reduce e-waste? How and in what
ways does experience in mid- and low-income
economies inform ongoing assumption about how
research and collaboration are conducted in high-
economy countries?
The aspects mentioned above, however, do not
really cover more in-depth problems about the par-
ticipation of underrepresented groups in a global
context. In this sense, as mentioned at the beginning
of the article, the problems of inclusiveness must
be addressed on many different levels and from
different angles and it would not be possible to
cover them all in one article. Nevertheless, I would
like to add that I think that the strengths and the
talents of the DH community are particularly
tuned to enabling and promoting inclusiveness.
The DH community includes a broad range of scho-
lars from different disciplines that can contribute
from their particular perspectives. Cultural theory,
postcolonial studies, feminist perspectives, and
other forms of critical theory have much to contrib-
ute. Additionally, DHers’ capacity and willingness to
build things can allow us to create projects and tools
that can help us to be more inclusive, for example,
creating backend tools that promote the crowd-
sourcing of translations. What about building a
truly international database of DH projects?
The DH community has enough knowledge about
standards and building crosswalks for metadata
that there is no reason that an international
database cannot harvest information from numer-
ous databases around the world that are adapted
to their own local needs but can still share infor-
mation whilst fulfilling diverse multilingual
and multicultural requirements. DH can handle
and would greatly benefit from larger and more
complex data inputs that respond to more diverse
needs.
Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2014
Geographical and linguistic diversity in DH
The incorporation of cultural critique of DH into
the way projects work is essential so that they do not
unconsciously build in features or aspects that
perpetuate exclusion instead of reducing it.
Furthermore, cultural critique will allow the DH
community to find mechanisms of inclusiveness
that do not automatically assume that the periphery
DH communities should be absorbed or follow
models from the DH centre. Methods that have
worked effectively in one cultural setting may fail
spectacularly in another and certain reasoning of
how things should work does not apply similarly
to other frameworks. The objective of inclusiveness
should not be cultural absorption or dominance but
rather building a community that learns and bene-
fits from collaboration. Models, surveys, and truism
should be placed in context.
It is clear that the DH community is larger and
more linguistically and geographically diverse than ini-
tially suggested by the available data. Both small and
large changes can be made that will continue to
change the make-up of the DH community.
Awareness and interest in changing are key factors
to the development of a more inclusive DH commu-
nity, and the overview provided indicates interest in
achieving change. Aspects of inclusiveness are complex
issues and have to be addressed by many and on many
different levels. The DH community combination of
technical skills and humanities background together
with a strong background in collaborative work can
cater towards achieving a more inclusive and open
field from which we shall all benefit considerably.
Notes
1 For example, Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012),
Digital_Humanities (2012), Understanding Digital
Humanities (2012), Defining Digital Humanities (2013),
and Humanities and the Digital (forthcoming 2014).
2 Elisabeth Burr, personal communication, email 2
November 2013.
3 Around the Digital Humanities in 80 days. More infor-
mation at: http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-
dh-in-80-days/.
4 Dı́a de Humanidades Digitales. More information at:
http://dhd2013.filos.unam.mx/.
5 Information retrieved from THATCamp: http://that
camp.org/ (accessed November 2013).
315
I. Galina Russell
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