Past activities
We continually organise research seminars, workshops and conferences on digital human sciences. The speakers are often invited from other universities, both Swedish and international. Our events are sometimes in Swedish, sometimes in English.
2024
Read about the events that have been organised in 2024.
Workshop: How to Design a Data-based Project to Analyze Patterns in Text
Presenter: Susanne Haaf-Dumont, Leipzig University, Germany
Time: October 11, 2024, 9.00–12.00
Location: Spelbomskan, Aula Magna, Frescati
Language: English
Short description: Workshop on data-based research projects. It addressed challenges regarding the design of such projects step-by-step and presented solutions. When starting a data-based research project, questions like these often arise: How do I obtain data, how should they be structured, and how can I evaluate my findings?
Panel discussion: Digital democracy in the EU elections?
Panelists: Emelie Schröder, Socialdemokraterna, Martin Borgs, Moderaterna, My Rohwedder, Aftonbladet, and Annie Reuterskiöld, Dagens Nyheter
Moderator: Andreas Widholm, Stockholm University
Time: May 23, 2024, 17.00–19.00
Location: Accelerator, Stockholm University, Frescativägen 26A
Language: Swedish
Short description: The event was co-organised by the Language and Power Network and DHS at Stockholm University. Representatives from political parties and media discussed the prerequisites of political communication in an era marked by radical technological change and political insecurity.
Read the invitation in Swedish
Seminar on text analysis: In the beginning there was... text!
Presenters: Katarina Fast, Beata Megyesi and Andrea Voyer, Stockholm University
Time: March 21, 2024,13.30–16.30
Location: Room E371, Campus Frescati, Stockholm University
Language: Swedish and English
Short description: Text is central for research communication. New tools open up possibilities for digitising and text analysis, but also challenges remain. Three human sciences researchers shared their experiences from research practical in Law, Linguistics and Sociology.
Workshop: Test AI-tools for Swedish historical texts
Presenter: Olof Karsvall, The Swedish National Archives
Moderators: Susanne Tienken and Jonatan Pettersson, Stockholm University
Time: March 20, 2024, 13.00–16.00
Location: Room E487, Campus Frescati, Stockholm University
Language: Swedish
Short description: a practical workshop in which the participants learned to use the tool Transkribus to interpret and make available Swedish handwritten texts. 15.6 Million Swedish words, noted down in the 17th, 18th and 19th century are the base for a new, revolutionary AI-model that can be reached via Transkribus. During the workshop, Olof Karsvall introduced the area of handwriting interpretation (HTR) for older archive material.
Read the invitation in Swedish
Webinar: AI and Art: This Changes Everything?
Presenters: Anne Ploin, University of Oxford, Andre Holzapfel, KTH, Joanna Zylinska, King’s College London, and Leonardo Salvador Arriagada Beltrán, University of Groningen and University of Chile
Time: January 17, 2024, 14.00–15.30
Location: Zoom
Language: English
Short description: How do AI and machine learning affect art? Webinar with presenters from four different universities. The event was co-organised by the European Sociological Association’s Research Network Sociology of the Arts and British Sociological Association’s Sociology of the Arts Study Group, together with DHS at Stockholm University.
2023
List of activities that were organised in 2023.
Profile seminar: From bookshelves to screen: digitising funeral sermons from the Skokloster castle library
Presenter: Susanne Tienken, Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German, Stockholm University
Time: December 7, 2023, 13.00–14.30
Location: Spelbomskan, Aula Magna, Stockholm University
Language: Swedish
Short description: Funeral sermons, printed versions of the sermons held at a funeral, are kept in the Skokloster Castle library. They form a unique Swedish collection from the 1600s and early 1700s of high value for researchers and genealogists. The Castle however is remote and lacks both heating and electricity, limiting the access to the fragile books. The seminar presents a project on digitising and making available this historic treasure.
Read the invitation in Swedish
Workshop on visualisation tool Nvivo: Using digital human sciences tools to see the bigger picture in your qualitative data
Presenter: Hanna Flyckt, Uppsala University library
Time: October 27, 2023, 09.30–15.30
Location: Bergsmannen, Aula Magna, Stockholm University
Language: English and Swedish
Short description: Hands-on workshop on the tool Nvivo for Stockholm University researchers in the social sciences, humanities and law faculties. The workshop covered amongst others how to organise, analyse and visualise qualitative data using Nvivo. The workshop was organised by DHS in collaboration with the Stockholm University Language and Power Network.
Seminar on digital infrastructure and human development: Human Timelines – IT to the rescue
Presenters: Magnus Enquist, Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
Time: April 27, 2023, 14.00–16.00
Location: Room M20, DSV, Borgarfjordsgatan 12, Kista – or Zoom
Language: English
Short description: A hybrid seminar on how digital infrastructure can help us to better understand the development of humanity and our future. Magnus Enquist presented his project on Cultural evolution in digital societies. Peter Søgaard Jørgensen presented the human timelines project, a digital infrastructure to investigate how human culture and environmental factors have developed from prehistoric times to the future.
Seminar on the cultural heritage Notre Dame: n-Dame_Heritage: n-Dimensional analysis and memorisation ecosystem for building cathedrals of knowledge in heritage science
Presenter: Livio De Luca, CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research), France
Time: February 16, 2023, 13.00–15.00
Location: Bergsmannen, Aula Magna, Stockholm University
Language: English
Short description: This research seminar will discuss analysing and interpretation of facts, objects and phenomena to create new data to serve as future scientific and cultural resources. A new multidisciplinary project was presented in which 175 researchers collaborate in the restoration of the Notre Dame Church in Paris. The research fields represented include archaeology, anthropology, architecture, chemistry, computer science and history.
2022
List of activities that were organised in 2022.
Symposium: Democracy and Digital Disintegration: Actors, Platforms, Citizens
Time: November 10, 2022, entire day
Location: Filmhuset, Stockholm
Language: English
Short description: DHS, the Department of Media Studies and Nordicom organised a multidisciplinary symposium from which some of the contributions were published in a special issue of Nordicom Review. During the symposium, the main theme of debate was how the current digital media landscape influences us as citizens. Topics included the power of algorithms, (dis)information, political polarisation, digital censorship and freedom of expression.
Seminar on AI and ethics in courts: AI Judges – At the Mercy of Machines
Presenters: Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, University of Bergen, Norway, John Lagström, Swedish National Courts Administration
Time: October 4, 2022, 10.00–12.00
Location: Faculty Room, Department of Law, Stockholm University or Zoom
Language: English
Short description: Hybrid seminar on AI judges in the future legal landscape. In the more and more digitalised society of our times, we allow machines to make decisions for us. This can for instance concern the music we listen to, job offers we may receive, who can be a good partner for life or if we are to be allowed to borrow money. In the future, AI can even be used for judging in legal cases. During the seminar, we discussed philosophical questions such as “Is it ethical to use AI judges?” and “How transparent do decisions need to be?”
Webinar: By Gustav: digitalisation, digital enriching and accessibility of Gustav III’s archive
Presenters: Mikael Alm och Johan Sjöberg, Uppsala University
Time: June 1, 2022, 15.00–16.30
Location: Zoom
Language: Swedish
Short description: When Gustav III died in 1792, his private archives containing correspondence and works in various areas ended up in the library of Uppsala University. The collection was made available in 1842 and has since been used by researchers to study the era's political, social and cultural lives. The webinar addressed the conservation and digitisation of the physical handwritings and how to increase accessibility. The developments in handwritten text recognition (HTR) and crowdsourcing increased the usability of the archive. The ability to search in the collection will allow for new types of research questions, for instance in the shape of text mining the works of Gustav III.
Read the invitation in Swedish
Seminar on digital cultural heritage: ArchAIDE – revolutionising archeology with machine learning
Presenter: Gabriele Gattiglia, University of Pisa, Italy
Time: May 4, 2022, 13.00–15.00
Location: Bergsmannen, Aula Magna, Stockholm University
Language: English
Short description: The recently finished research project ArchAIDE was presented. The project consisted of applying machine learning techniques to assist archeologists in the identification of patterns and shapes of ceramic fragments. ArchAIDE not only sped up the work and made it more affordable, it also made the data available to more researchers by publishing the documentation online.
2021
List of activities that were organised in 2021.
Profile seminar on the power of media: Convincing technology, suspicious technology?
Presenters: Pontus Strimling, Center for Cultural Evolution Research, Stockholm University and the Institute for Future Studies, Mattias Svahn, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Gustav Borgefalk, Royal College of Art (RCA), Great Britain.
Time: November 17, 2021, 13.00–14.30
Location: Zoom
Language: Swedish
Short description: This profile seminar was arranged by the Human Sciences at Stockholm University. It is a truism that media are used to influence and manipulate. In all ages and concerning any current communication technology, fears of an easily influenced population have been expressed. Even if this fear is not new, there is still a valid base for it. Digital technology and social media have simplified and sped up communication, while algorithms influence everything from our consumer behaviour and social interactions as well as how we vote and what values we have.
Read the invitation in Swedish
Seminar: Exposing Natural Language Models – A Threat to Higher Education?
Presenters: Jussi Karlgren, University of Helsinki and Spotify, and Magnus Sahlgren, RISE and AI Sweden
Time: October 28, 2021
Language: English
Short description: How can we know if a text has been produced by human or artificial intelligence? Can new technology be used by,for example, students to generate theses with minimal effort? These were the questions discussed at the hybrid seminar.
Seminar: Covid-19 and the Digital Media Ecology
Presenters: Peter Jakobsson and Qian Zhang, Uppsala universitet, Anne Kaun and Fredrik Stiernstedt, Södertörn University, Christian Christensen, Miayse Christensen, Natasha Webster and Andreas Widholm, Stockholm University
Time: May 20, 2021
Language: English
Short description: This seminar was organised by DHS and the Department of Media Studies, concerning the role of media and technological developments during the COVID-19 epidemic. Amongst others, we discussed the trust of citizens in the authorities’ information and journalism in a time where disinformation on COVID-19 abounds, how segregation and inequality affect the spreading of disease and death rates as well as the new platform economy.
Read about the seminar in Swedish
Seminar: AI and automation
Presenters: Virginia Dignum, Umeå University, and Barry Brown, Teresa Cerratto Pargman and Jonas Tallberg, Stockholm University
Time: February 26, 2021
Language: English
Short description: At the seminar, the three projects at Stockholm University that received funding from The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) were presented. This call focused on digitalisation and autonomous systems. The three projects are geared towards the consequences for people and society when digitalisation creates increasingly independent technology – machines that don’t need humans to make decisions.
2019
List of activities that were organised in 2019.
Conference: Autonomy in Digital Society
Keynote speakers: Richard Grusin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente, the Netherlands
Time: November 7, 2019
Language: English
Short description: This one day conference focused on autonomy in digital society. When more and more aspects of daily life are dealt with via digital services, channels and tools – what are the consequences for individuals' social, cultural, political and legal integrity? Can we control the digital information structures that permeate our daily lives? Is it a matter of control or rather a question of facing a new type of emancipatory, democratic and global digital network culture?
Workshop: On digital human sciences and method II
Presenters: Jonas Andersson Schwarz, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Anna Dahlgren, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Karin Hansson, Department of Culture and Aesthetics and Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, and Pelle Snickars, Humlab, Umeå University
Time: April 1, 2019
Language: Swedish
Short description: In this second open workshop on method and digital human sciences, new types of cross-disciplinary co-operations were discussed in relation to digital tools, how digital tools can generate new objects of study as well as methodological challenges regarding the structuring of information on social media and other digital objects of study. The research area of digital human sciences not only crosses scientific disciplines and research areas but also the boundaries between the faculties. The question remains what cross-disciplinary approaches imply for scientific practices. What could a DHS method be? And how do the potential DHS methods relate to the digital tools often at the centre of attention in traditional digital humanities?
2018
List of activities that were organised in 2018.
Workshop: On digital human sciences and method I
Presenters: David Gunnarsson Lorentzen, Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås, Per Israelson, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, and Victoria Johansson, Lund University Humanities Lab
Time: November 22, 2018
Language: Swedish
Short description: The first open workshop on method and digital human sciences aimed for discussion on how the new area of digital human sciences relates to issues of cross-disciplinarity and the focus on digital tools characterising traditional digital humanities. The research area of digital human sciences not only crosses scientific disciplines and research areas but also the boundaries between the faculties.The question remains what cross-disciplinary approaches imply for scientific practices.What could a DHS method be? And how do the potential DHS methods relate to the digital tools often at the centre of attention in traditional digital humanities?
Last updated: February 18, 2025
Source: Digital Human Sciences (DHS)