ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Hidden Costs of Digital Humanities: Labour, Rights, and Infrastructures in the History of Science

• In Event: The Impact of the Digital Revolution on the History of Science and its Social Implications-4

English Abstract

Digital Humanities projects in history of science increasingly rely on large-scale image and text databases to broaden our understanding of pre-modern and modern knowledge traditions. Yet their success or failure depends less on technical ingenuity than on the overarching conditions under which they are conceived and sustained. Particularly, global, interdisciplinary projects require dedicated and long-term funding for infrastructure, reproduction rights, personnel, events, and publication output. In Europe, such infrastructures remain uneven: France has invested in shared platforms like Huma‑Num; Germany supports large projects but struggles with sustainability; Nordic countries coordinate national strategies; and the UK built strong university centres that now face difficulties after the loss of EU funding. Moreover, Southern and Eastern Europe rely almost entirely on short‑term EU grants, leaving infrastructures fragmented and continuity uncertain.
Equally critical is the recognition of personnel infrastructures. The enormous manual labour of uploading, curating, and error‑correcting data is indispensable yet undervalued, dismissed as auxiliary rather than acknowledged as an interdisciplinary bridge between historians and IT specialists. Without ethical frameworks for crediting this work, the foundations of DH remain precarious. A further challenge lies in ensuring continued access to and reuse of project data once funding ends or contracts expire. Rights of use are often left to the discretion of individual directors; intellectual property laws provide limited clarity; and interdisciplinary publication platforms are virtually non-existent. This talk will not only show how historical complexity intersects with digital infrastructures and but also argue that sustainable solutions—reliable agreements, integration with libraries or DH centres, and global frameworks for long‑term management—are essential for the future of DH in the history of science.

Author

• Rana Brentjes, independent