The summer semester is about to begin here at LMU Munich and I am preparing for my first ever course. The title is “Introduction to XML, and editing ancient manuscripts” and is aimed at students and staff who are interested in this topic. My first class is next Tuesday and the topic is “What is Digital Humanities”? (how very appropriate to talk about this today of all days). So I went off to my favorite coffee shop this morning to sit and in a very non-digital way get something down on paper about this. This means that all morning I have been reflecting on the question: “What is Digital Humanities to me?”

I know there are a lot of attempts to define DH (the Day of DH blog being one of them) and I am going to give those who turn up to the class an introduction to all of these other views. But for me it boils down to a particular point.

As a Digital Humanist, I negotiate/translate between scholars/data in the field of Humanities and programmers/digital tools. I can do this because I, 1) have a background in Humanities and an understanding of the main issues of this field and 2) have the technical knowledge to understand how best to accomodate these issues digitally.