In the arts and humanities, the use of computational, statistical, and mathematical approaches has considerably increased in recent years. This research is characterized by the use of formal methods and the construction of explicit, computational models. This includes quantitative, statistical approaches, but also more generally computational methods for processing and analyzing data, as well as theoretical reflections on these approaches. Despite the undeniable growth of this research area, many scholars still struggle to find suitable research-oriented venues to present and publish computational work that does not lose sight of traditional modes of inquiry in the arts and humanities. This is the scholarly niche that the CHR conference aims to fill. More precisely, the conference aims at

1. Building a community of scholars working on humanities research questions relying on a wide range of computational and quantitative approaches to humanities data in all its forms. We consider this community to be complementary to the digital humanities landscape. We actively seek, welcome, and encourage people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities to join. This includes, but is not limited to, scholars from underrepresented groups, different academic paths, and those who are contributing novel perspectives to the computational humanities landscape.

2. Promoting good practices through sharing “research stories”. Such good practices may include, for instance, the publication of code and data in order to support transparency and replication of studies; pre-registering research design to present theoretical justification, hypotheses, and proposed statistical analysis; or a redesign of the reviewing process for interdisciplinary studies that rely on computational approaches to answer questions relevant to the humanities.

Topics of interest

We invite original research papers from a wide range of topics, including – but not limited to – the following:

• Applications of statistical methods and machine learning to process, enrich and analyse humanities data, including new media and cultural heritage data;
• Hypothesis-driven humanities research, simulations and generative models;
• Development of new quantitative and empirical methods for humanities research;
• Modeling bias, uncertainty, and conflicting interpretation in the humanities;
• Evaluation methods, evaluation data sets and development of standards;
• Formal, statistical or quantitative evaluation of categorization / periodization;
• Theoretical frameworks and epistemology for quantitative methods and computational humanities approaches;
• Translation and transfer of methods from other disciplines, approaches to bridge humanistic and statistical interpretations;
• Visualisation, dissemination (incl. Open science) and teaching in computational humanities.
• Potential and challenges of AI applications to humanities research.

To gain further insight into paper topics, please also refer to the proceedings of previous years: CHR2020, CHR2021, CHR2022, CHR2023.

Venue

The 2024 edition of the Computational Humanities Research conference will be hosted by the DIGHUMLAB and Center for Humanities Computing, Aarhus University. The conference will be a hybrid event with an option to attend in person in Aarhus, virtually, or a combination of the two. More details will follow soon.

Important dates

Deadline for new submissions: July 11, 2024, 23:59:59 UTC-12 (Anywhere on Earth)

Deadline for updating submissions: July 15, 2024, 23:59:59 UTC-12 (Anywhere on Earth)

Notification to authors: September 16, 2024

Registration opens: September 17, 2024

Deadline final, camera-ready version: 16 October, 2024

Deadline for registration to the conference: 25 November, 2024

Pre-conference workshops: December 3, 2024

Conference: December 4 - December 6, 2024

Submission types

Long Papers: up to 5000 words (ca. 10 pages, references, abstract and tables/illustrations excluded). Long papers report on completed, original and unpublished results. Brevity of argument is preferred. We welcome the use of appendices or other supplementary information.

Short Papers: up to 3000 words (ca. 6 pages, references, abstract and tables/illustrations excluded). Short papers report on focused contributions, and may present work in progress. Short papers are presented either as short oral presentations or posters. We welcome the use of appendices or other supplementary information.

Lightning Talks: Submit an abstract of up to 750 words (excluding references, tables and illustrations) to give a 5 minute presentation during a lightning talks session. This format can be well suited for reporting work in progress, introducing ideas, preliminary results, or focused question-answer research.

Workshops: up to 1500 words. Workshops should be organised to be more interactive than the main conference. The workshops will take place before the conference, on 3 December. Workshop proposals should describe:

• the aims and set up of the workshop,
• the academic background for the work,
• proposed length (e.g. half day or full day),
• an outline of the day, including the types of activities,
• the expected key outcomes,
• a short bio of each organiser or presenter, including their name, affiliation, email address
• a plan for promoting the workshop to draw participants.
• specific requirements, including but not limited to special equipment (e.g. audio/video), software, physical space arrangements,
• any technical knowledge, skills, or experience participants should have prior to attending the workshop.

Submission instructions and review process

We welcome submissions from scholars of diverse backgrounds and particularly from under-represented groups.

Submissions should be written in English and must be formatted according to the CHR latex template (see instructions on the forum to get you started here).

Submissions are to be submitted anonymously. All submissions will be refereed through a double-blind peer review process by at least three reviewers with final acceptance decisions made by the Programme Chairs.

Papers should be submitted as PDF documents via the EasyChair conference management system: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=chr2024.

At least one author of each accepted submission must register to the conference and present the paper or poster.

Accepted papers will be submitted for publication online via the CEUR-WS Proceedings publication service.

Submission deadline details

An initial paper submission must be submitted to EasyChair by July 11. No new submissions will be accepted after this deadline. Existing submissions can be updated until the final submission deadline of July 15. While earlier versions of submission may be used to determine reviewer assignments, only the final submission will be used within the review process itself.

Instructions for paper anonymisation

Any information which might help identify authors should be anonymized. To this end, please:

1. do not include authors’ names and affiliations;
2. use placeholders for code and data repositories, e.g. https://anonymous.4open.science/, https://zenodo.org/record/xxxxx;
3. do not mention self-references in a way that can reveal the author’s identity, e.g. do not use “We previously demonstrated (Smith, 2002)” but “Smith (2022) previously demonstrated”;
4. leave acknowledgements blank.

Anonymity period

The anonymity period runs until the notification of acceptance (September, 2024). Preprints can be published after this date.

Questions?

Contact the organisers if you have any questions, specific requirements or concerns: info@computational-humanities-research.org or drop us a line on the discourse forum.