Humanities and Social Sciences

This article is a draft

This is not a complete article: This is a draft, a work in progress that is intended to be published into an article, which may or may not be ready for inclusion in the main wiki. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative.

Introduction

Scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) are using increasingly complex computational tools, methods, and techniques in their research. There are three elements of the current landscape that place the HSS in a position for rapid growth:

• increasing open source data;
• increasing access to significant computing power and tools; and
• growing research computing competency among humanities researchers.

To support researchers in the HSS, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada has a dedicated team of professionals led by a HSS specialist. For more information, please contact the HSS Team via email (hss@computecanada.ca) or browse the additional information below.

Who We Are

The lead team:

• Megan Meredith-Lobay, Digital Research Specialist with focus on the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of British Columbia (BC DRI Group)
• Nick Rochlin, Research Data Management Specialist at the University of British Columbia (BC DRI Group)
• Pier-Luc St-Onge, Advanced Research Computing Analyst at McGill University (Calcul Québec)

Team members by region (regional partner):

• British Columbia (BC DRI Group)
  • Simon Fraser University
    • Alex Razoumov, Research Solutions Lead and Visualization Specialist
    • Marie-Hélène Burle, Research Solutions Specialist
  • University of British Columbia
    • Garth Evans, Audio-video Analyst
    • Jennifer Abel, Language Sciences Specialist
    • Wade Klaver, System Administrator & Consultant
  • University of Victoria
    • Matt Huculak, Head, Advanced Research Services & Digital Scholarship Librarian

• Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba (Prairies)
  • University of Calgary
    • Dave Schulz, System Administrator & Consultant

• Ontario (CAC, SHARCNET, SciNet)
  • Brock University
    • James Desjardins, High Performance Computing Consultant
  • McMaster University
    • Mark Hahn, System Administrator & Consultant
  • University of Toronto
    • Arun Jacob, Specialist in Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Labour Studies and Media Archaeology
    • Ramses van Zon, High Performance Computing Applications Analyst
  • University of Waterloo
    • Pawel Pomorski, High Performance Computing Analyst
  • University of Windsor
    • Paul Preney, High Performance and Technical Computing Consultant

• Québec (Calcul Québec)
  • École des Hautes études commerciales (HÉC)
    • Mohamed Jabir, Data Analyst
  • Université Laval
    • Félix-Antoine Fortin, Magic Castle lead developer

• Atlantic provinces (ACENET)
  • Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia)
    • Chris Geroux, Research Consultant with a focus on cloud and big data
    • Lee Wilson, Director, Research Data Management at the Alliance
    • Michele Fash, Marketing & Business Development Specialist
  • Memorial University of Newfoundland
    • Craig Squires, System Administrator & Consultant
  • Saint Mary's University (Nova Scotia)
    • Joyce Thomson, Digital Services Librarian

To contact us, please email the HSS National Team at hss@computecanada.ca

HSS Services for researchers

National services are available to all members of the research community with documentation in both official languages, trained support team and robust system architectures.

• Advocacy and Outreach - Members attend conferences, make presentations to academic and other groups, and actively participate in the scholarly community in order to better understand our user needs.
• Collaboration Services – Sites located across Canada are capable of both delivering and viewing large video conferences.
• Cloud – Virtual-machine development space that includes an outward-facing IP address.
• Computation – Expandable power ranging from the equivalent of a second desktop to supercomputers with thousands of cores, terabytes of RAM, and a variety of system architectures.
• General Analyst/Consultant Support – Consultations regarding project architecture and resource needs with technical experts with skills ranging from specialty software selection to program optimization.
• Globus – Fast, secure, sharing and fire-and-forget file transfers.
• Nextcloud – 50Gb of shareable, Dropbox-like space available across multiple devices.
• Platforms and Portals – Hosting for specialized data and tools for entire research communities.
• Specialized Software – More than 900 software programs and packages already integrated with national compute clusters.
• Storage – Robust storage solutions for backup and mid- to long-term storage.
• Training – Training sessions covering core skills offered regularly and custom courses available on request. Please see below for all training opportunities, including those pertinent to Humanities and Social Sciences for your specific region.
  • Compute Canada training calendar
  • ACENET Training Resources
  • Calcul Québec Training
  • Compute Ontario
• Visualization Support – Dedicated 3D visualization expert available
• (New!) Windows in the Cloud - run Windows applications in the cloud.

Other Resources for Canadian Digital Humanities Scholars

• Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)
• Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH)
• Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI)

Project Showcase

• CWRC
• Voyant
• Archives Unleashed
• Others