The fifth CDCS Annual Lecture, The Point is Still To Change It: On Doing Better Than Best Practices in Data Work for Culture and Society, presented by Alex Gil, and hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s CDCS Digital Social Science Cluster.

First broadcast on 13 December 2024.

Abstract

So-called “Best Practices” are usually nothing of the sort. They assume a universal playing field which butts against the asymmetric nature of our cultures and societies. This is especially so in the case of the construction of our hybrid historical and cultural record—parts analog, parts digital. In this talk I will present an overview of my participation in the construction of such a record spanning over a decade of work in the intellectual space of the digital humanities, and that corner of it I have strived to nurture, the Caribbean digital humanities. Throughout this trajectory I’ve consistently encountered best practices that serve as little else than alibis for rigid hierarchies and the imposition of North Atlantic forms of being that take for granted rich computational infrastructures. We will take a closer look together at the concept of minimal computing, nimble tents and pirate care, all with a view to convince you that we can do better than Best, that in some cases, we must.

Speaker Biography

Alex Gil is Senior Lecturer II and Associate Research Faculty of Digital Humanities in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, where he teaches introductory and advanced courses in digital humanities, and runs project-based learning and collective research initiatives. His research interests include Caribbean culture and history, digital humanities and technology design for different infrastructural and socio-economic environments, and the ownership and material extent of the cultural and scholarly record. He is currently senior editor of archipelagos journal, co-organizer of The Caribbean Digital annual conference, and co-principal investigator of the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.

 

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Header Image: Promotional poster for the lecture