Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics

The Digital Humanities & Cultural Analytics Minor provides you with the means to acquire a 21st-century skill set to understand and analyse digital and digitized culture. How can a computer ‘read’ the millions of paintings found in the Rijksmuseum? What does your Letterboxd or Spotify data say about you? Is fanfiction more or less emotional than other types of writing? How can we detect disinformation in social media?

Our culture — all the stuff we make as humans — is increasingly available digitally and online. Millions of works of art, books, and music can be viewed or downloaded with a simple click of a mouse. But what can we do with it all? In the Minor in Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics, you will gain a new set of skills which will help you understand and analyse digital culture using cutting-edge methods and technologies.

Tailored to appeal to students from all fields of research, the minor aims to complement your BA by providing you with the means to acquire a 21st-century skill set so you can reflect on and analyse digital and digitized culture, including art, literature, social media data, and historical sources. 

The LUCDH

The Minor in Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics is an initiative of the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities (LUCDH), which brings together students and researchers to rethink the role of human technologies and the Humanities in a digital age. We offer many other opportunities if you want to bring your digital skills to a next level, from basic to advanced and beyond. For example, you can extend your minor by picking from our list of digital electives. These courses are also open to students who are not participating in the DH&CA minor. You can find the LUCDH in the Humanities Hub in Huizinga. In our Digital Lab and recording studios we offer state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. It is your place to study and work on your digital projects and meet and work with others. Keep an eye on our website for the centre’s lunch lectures, workshops and conferences.

The courses in the Minor combine practical skills with critical reflection on humans and our digital world, and are designed to unlock new digital tools and ways of thinking to complement your own field of research and interests. For example, in ‘Hacking the Humanities’, you will learn how to use the programming language Python, and apply it to the analysis of sources including literature and social media posts.   In ‘The Technologies of Digital Culture’, you will learn how digital texts are made, the technologies used to do so, and how these new formats are changing the way we consume them. The Minor also offers a space for thinking about and debating  digitization, and the influence of AI in our daily lives. Topics covered in the core courses will include, for example, social media, the knowledge economy, digital art, video games and the debates surrounding ethics, creativity, and explainability in Artificial Intelligence. You will also be introduced to key moments in the history of computing in order to gain a good understanding of how digital media differ from print media, and what consequences their unique character might have for the production and dissemination of knowledge.

Enrollment takes place from … May via eduxchange. The DH&CA minor has a maximum number of participants. There are 40 places available for students at Leiden University and 10 from students from Delft and Erasmus University. Registrations are on a first come, first placed basis. The programme is taught in English Questions? Contact the study coordinator of the DH&CA minor: stuco-digitalhumanities@hum.leidenuniv.nl

The LUCDH

The Minor in Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics is an initiative of the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities (LUCDH), which brings together students and researchers to rethink the role of human technologies and the Humanities in a digital age. We offer many other opportunities if you want to bring your digital skills to a next level, from basic to advanced and beyond. For example, you can extend your minor by picking from our list of digital electives. These courses are also open to students who are not participating in the DH&CA minor. You can find the LUCDH in the Humanities Hub in Huizinga. In our Digital Lab and recording studios we offer state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. It is your place to study and work on your digital projects and meet and work with others. Keep an eye on our website for the centre’s lunch lectures, workshops and conferences.

No prior knowledge is required to enter the DH&CA minor. At the LUCDH, we have years of experience working with students from an interdisciplinary range of fields and international backgrounds, which we use to offer an accessible programme that supports you to understand and take more control of your digital workflows, tools and life.