The AHDS and E-Science
How the AHDS is enabling advanced exploitation of ICT in humanities computing
In the forthcoming AHRC Glossary for ICT, E-Science has been defined as
"developing shared access to research facilities distributed across the Internet in the form of computational processing and data collections. This has allowed more powerful and innovative research designs in many areas of scientific research, and is capable of making substantial differences the arts and humanities as well. Most E-science developments fall under the heading of grid technologies".
There are two strands (an E-Science Support Centre and a Scoping Study) to the AHDS' work in this area. This work has been built on to previous research into the field, particularly an AHRB-sponsored Expert Seminar, held in April 2004. Documents from the seminar are available here.
- E-Science for the Arts and Humanities: A Discussion Paper, Sheila Anderson, April 2004 PDF version (28kb) | RTF version (58kb)
- E-Science Expert Seminar: Report on Proceedings, Sheila Anderson, May 2004 PDF version (37kb) | RTF version (67kb)
E-Science Support Centre
Along with the AHRC-funded Methods Network, the AHDS has established an E-Science Support Centre. It will run until July 2008.
The goals of the centre will be
- Provide the practical assistance and liaison with the existing e-science infrastructure that arts and humanities researchers will need in order to use the grid technologies.
- Carry out advisory and training activities in support of e-science in the Arts and Humanities.
- Facilitate interdisciplinary work and the exchange of expertise on e-science, both within the Arts and Humanities community, and by means of outreach the scientific and engineering disciplines, and to the existing e-science community, nationally and internationally.
- Develop and support further partnerships between the arts and humanities community and the existing e-science support infrastructure that will support advanced research methods.
- Support, monitor and evaluate projects funded under the e-science initiative
Read the full proposal for the E-Science Support Centre PDF version (15kb) | RTF version (24kb)
This work has been funded by the JISC.
Scoping E-Science and E-Social Science Developments and their value to the arts and humanities
The AHDS won funding as part of the AHRC's ICT Strategy Project scheme to undertake a scoping study to discover how existing work in other disciplines can assist the arts and humanities community in exploiting E-science
The project aims to deliver
- A report for the AHRC summarising the role the E-science agenda might play in enhancing and advancing research in the arts and humanities; and to highlight a possible agenda for an E-research programme to be led by the AHRC.
- A set of reports from the a series of subject-based expert seminars, summarising potential within subject areas
- A database of information about E-science projects and their relevance to the arts and humanities. This database will be linked to the projects and methods database and searchable using its methods taxonomy.
- The outputs from the project will be used to enhance and improve the methods taxonomy, developed by the projects and methods database
More details can be found on the Scoping E-Science project page
Page last modified: 9th July 2006 by Alastair Dunning