DAReS: Transforming the Gap: Inclusive Digital Arts and Humanities Research Skills

Digital humanities, arts and humanities, and technology sectors all have well-known "diversity gaps" where women, LGBTQIA+ those who have disclosed a disability, Black, Asian, and minority ethnic groups continue to be disproportionately marginalised and underrepresented. These gaps impact not only the broader HE environment but also specifically the arts and humanities research landscape.

The DAReS project, fully titled “Transforming the Gap: Inclusive Digital Arts and Humanities Research SKills (DAReS) received £474,000 from the “Embedding Digital Skills” AHRC funding scheme. The project works with marginalized arts and humanities researchers at every career stage to develop and pilot an inclusive model for advanced data and digital research skills provision. The DAReS Project aims to transform these known gaps in data and digital skills research training by:

• Prioritising inclusion and diversity in data and digital skill research training as preconditions for innovation and high-quality research
• Working with marginalised and under-represented arts and humanities researchers at every career stage to develop an inclusive and intersectional approach to data and digital research skills
• Developing a public data skills wiki and learning resources with Wikimedia UK and project partners
• Creating a network and self-sustaining community of practice for exchange, knowledge building and resource sharing

Led by Zoetanya Sujon as Principal Investigator (London College of Communication), with Co-Investigators, Anna Troisi (Creative Computing Institute), Dr Maitrayee Basu (London College of Communication), Gauti Sigthorsson (Roehampton University) and Nessa Keddo (London College of Communication), the project team is also working with partners Wikimedia UK, and CRAC/Vitae, the Careers Research and Advisory Centre / Vitae.

The DAReS CoLab aims to transform known gaps into opportunities for inclusive practice enabling game-changer solutions, artistic practice, and impactful, high-quality research in arts and humanities. By focusing on inclusive practice for the arts and humanities, the DAReS project provides an achievable plan for addressing and transforming these gaps into good practice for better research outcomes.

Key areas of data and digital research skills include:

• Data wrangling
• Analytics
• Data visualisation
• Social network analysis
• Computational data analysis

Other project members include Bea Wohl as the Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Natasha Mays as Project Coordinator and Parth Desai as Senior IT Support Analyst. Based at LCC, the DAReS project is a 12-month project funded by the AHRC (AH/X007510/1) from April 1, 2023 - March 31, 2024.

Find out more about the project.

Contact the project team: DAReS@lcc.arts.ac.uk