RESOURCE: Digital Humanities, Digital Hegemony: Exploring Funding Practices and Unequal Access in the Digital Humanities

The March 2016 issue of the online newsletter, Computers and Society, includes an article by John D. Martin, III (University of North Carolina) and Carolyn Runyon (University of Tennessee), “Digital humanities, digital hegemony: exploring funding practices and unequal access in the digital humanities.”

The abstract is reproduced here:

The digital humanities represent, for many researchers, the potential for extending their research in terms of audience, scope, methods, and opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration. Ideally, this potential should also extend access to cultural engagement and preservation for marginalized groups. In practice, the reality may be quite different for projects that focus on diverse racial, gender, ethnic, and cultural heritage. In this short article we discuss preliminary findings from a study of patterns in U.S. federal funding for digital humanities projects, with particular focus on cultural heritage and archival projects. Through the lens of funding and access, we raise some questions about whether the digital humanities can represent a shift from old hegemonies or run the risk of expressing them in a new technological paradigm.