Digital Humanities Comic 'Big Data + Old History'

You used to submit an abstract to a conference to share your findings. Now you ‘Dance your Thesis’ or compete to convince a world-class cartoonist to animate your research and turn it into a video. The modes of disseminating research have broadened in the past decade, with students in particular being offered a range of new contests designed to get them thinking creatively about engaging the public with academic research.

Jorge Cham, the internationally renowned animator behind ‘PhD Comics’, asked students ‘can you describe your thesis in two minutes?’ Cham then chose the best descriptions and turned them into animated cartoons. I'm very pleased to announce my entry was one of the winners, and the animated video of my thesis has just been released:

My two-minute talk focused on how distant reading has been central to my PhD research. There's only so much detail you can fit into a two minute talk, but I hope has been able to introduce the idea of distant reading to a much wider audience and that some of them might take the step to learn more. It's been a great experience, and I'd like to thank Jorge and his team for creating this opportunity. And since getting selected as one of the winners was partially down to voting from the public, I'd also like to thank everyone who took a moment last year to vote for my entry. The response has been wonderful. So thanks again.

I hope you enjoy the result.