SORS: Computational research in the Humanities: current state and future potential

Severo Ochoa Research Seminars  BSC Events  CSSH Seminars 

Date: 30/Apr/2025 Time: 12:00

Place:

[HYBRID] Severo Ochoa Meeting Room, Capella, BSC

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Abstract

The application of computational approaches in the humanities has been scarce but for a few areas and specific applications such as NLP and textual analysis, geospatial analyses, and quantitative historical approaches. This is related to multiple causes including current academic field divisions and traditions, economic interests and, perhaps more interestingly, the nature of humanities' data types.

This presentation will briefly discuss these factors, investigate the nature of data within the humanities, and analyse their potential to contribute to major research topics beyond the humanities. A series of multidisciplinary case studies will illustrate how the combination of HPC, ML, and other computational approaches has the potential to unlock complex and unstructured humanities data and, by doing so, contribute to the understanding of human nature and improve humanity's future.

Short Bio
Hèctor A. Orengo is an ICREA Research Professor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. He obtained his PhD from the Rovira i Virgili University in 2010 and, since then, he has developed research at the GEOLAB (UMR 6042) in France, the Universities of Nottingham, Sheffield and Cambridge in the UK, and the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology in Spain. His research has focused on long-term human-environment interactions and the development of computational methods to address archaeological problems.
 
 
 
 
 

Speakers

Speaker: Hector Orengo Romeu, ICREA Research Professor at BSC, and researcher at the GEOLAB (UMR 6042) in France, the Universities of Nottingham, Sheffield and Cambridge in the UK, and the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology in Spain.
Host: Mercè Crosas. Computational Social Sciences and Humanities Laboratory Director