Lecture: David Beavan

“Beyond Digital Humanities: Weaving Humanities, Research Software Engineering and AI,” David Beavan, lead research software engineer in the Research Engineering Group (REG) at The Alan Turing Institute, and research affiliate at the University of Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture & Society (CDCS).

David Beavan from The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, will lead an interdisciplinary journey showcasing cutting-edge digital humanities scholarship and the leading role of research software engineers in the Living with Machines project. The project is a flagship research initiative that aims to rethink the impact of technology on the lives of ordinary people during the Industrial Revolution (1780-1920), bringing together historians, geographers, linguists and curators, alongside research software engineers and research data scientists.

Through wrangling 109 billion words of newspapers, 129 thousand sheets of maps, and 180 million census entries, Beavan will demonstrate how the research team has brought new insights while maximizing collaboration. He will also discuss the responsible use of AI, the challenges of navigating intellectual property rights and processing sources securely, and how data science has a lot to learn about representativeness and bias from the humanities.

Finally, Beavan will look towards the future of digital research infrastructure in the UK. Can he resolve his identity: digital humanaut, software scribe or research wrangler?

Beavan has been Research Engineering's lead for Accelerating AI in the Arts and Humanities. He has led the Research Engineering Group's work on Data-centric Engineering projects such as AI for Control Problems, Vehicle Grid Integration and the development of the Data Safe Haven Classification Web App. He is an organizer of the award-winning Turing Data Stories, an open community creating and curating data stories.

He is vice president and trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering, and is a member of the UKRI Peer Review College, reviewing for both AHRC and ESRC. Beavan has served the digital humanities community as an elected member of the European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH), and was a former co-organizer of the the Humanities and Data Science Turing Interest Group.

This event is presented by the Willson Center Digital Humanities Lab (DigiLab), the UGA Libraries, and the UGA Humanities Council as part of the UGA Humanities Festival.