History Lab: Being a Scholar in the Digital Age

18 January 2016, 5.30 -7.30pm

Being a Scholar in the Digital Age I: Social Media in Academia

Gordon Room (G34), Senate House (South Block)

Our first session will focus on how to best utilise social media to build networks, disseminate your research and engage with the academic debates surrounding your area of study. We will have a panel of academics who will discuss their use of a variety of social media tools including how best to engage with twitter, blogging, and Wikipedia. You will also have the opportunity to ask your own questions about how such tools can benefit your own work.

The panel will include Sierra Williams, managing editor of the LSE Impact Blog; Jane Tinkler, Head of Social Science Section on the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and co-author of The Impact of the Social Sciences: How academics and their work make a difference (2014); and, Martin Poulter who is a website and technical developer at the University of Bristol and a Director of Wikimedia UK.

29 February, 5.30 – 7.30pm

Being a Scholar in the Digital Age II: Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Humanities

Gordon Room (G34), Senate House (South Block)

The second session will look at digital resources. We will have panellists speaking about their experiences of working on digitisation projects and the challenges they faced, as well as discussing the wider issues of access, curatorship and the different ways we engage with digital materials.

The panel will include Professor Melissa Terras, Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities; Professor Arthur Burns, Professor of Modern British History at Kings College London and Director of the pioneering The Clergy of the Church of England Database, 1540-1835; and, a member of the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Team.