│By Chris Houghton, Head of Academic Partnerships│
This blog post details the Gale Hacking History event run in collaboration with Digital Scholarship @ Oxford in May 2025. It also reflects on the value of using hackathons to teach digital humanities tools and methodologies, enabling participants with no knowledge of DH to collaboratively develop projects and build advanced skills quickly.
Humanities in the Spotlight
In the age of AI, how we teach arts, humanities and social science (AHSS) disciplines in universities is firmly in the spotlight. Seemingly every week brings a new report into the scale of generative AI use by students, and how it fatally undermines the intellectual integrity of the academy.
Rapid technological changes challenge not only how humanities departments teach, but also what they teach. In an era where humanities departments face funding cuts and ideological attack, it can often feel like an existential crisis. However, any crisis brings opportunity, and enterprising organisations are using this as a chance to reiterate the value of their disciplines. Professor Lucy Noakes, President of the Royal Historical Society makes the case for history:
We might start by better understanding and communicating what a history degree actually involves. I suspect many outside university history would be surprised to learn that today’s students work as often with data sets and digital tools as they do with paper archives. We might also listen and learn from those who’ve just completed a history degree and who leave university with a fair degree of optimism. In the 2024 National Student Survey, 80% of history graduates described themselves as confident that the skills they’ve gained will serve them well in the workforce—a level higher than many more overtly vocational programmes.
At Gale, we see humanities departments throughout the world seeking to enhance their subject teaching by equipping their students with digital literacies. These transferable, adaptable technical and data skills can directly prepare them for workplaces which are transforming at head-spinning rates.
Teaching Digital Literacies with Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Since 2018, Gale Digital Scholar Lab has enabled students and researchers to develop digital humanities research, regardless of their technical skill. As it grew in popularity, we developed an extensive suite of pedagogical resources to support instructors and the students they teach. Latest enhancements include a project workflow which allows researchers to submit their projects for free expert review and publication on the open Gale Research Showcase. The recent release of a free ‘Introduction to Digital Humanities’ course provides instructors with an adaptable set of classroom resources perfect for integrating the Lab into their teaching.
Hacking History and the Hackathon as a Method of Teaching Digital Humanities
March 13, 2025 saw Gale’s second Hackathon take place at Jesus College Oxford, in partnership with Digital Scholarship @ Oxford.
We were lucky enough to be able to use the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub, which provided an incredible space for a day of collaboration and learning.
MICA Hiscock ©Hufton+Crow
Our goal for Hacking History events is to give participants the space to learn digital humanities methodologies through Gale Digital Scholar Lab by collaboratively building projects and learning from each other. Hackathons are a form of event that is growing in popularity throughout industry and academia. They can act as catalysts for innovation – shaping a dynamic ecosystem that combines technical development with community and long-term network building – and it is this which makes them ideal for digital humanities. You can learn more about the Hacking History format in this blog post on the first event at Loyola University, Chicago.
The cohort of attendees was split into groups of 2 or 3, divided between a ‘New to DH’ and an ‘Prior Experience with DH’ track. This allowed us to tailor help and support at the correct level for the attendees, minimising the risk of going too fast or too slowly.
In each track, attendees received a brief introduction to the workflow of Gale Digital Scholar Lab before being placed into their groups and encouraged to begin exploring. Groups chose their project from a pre-arranged list of topics, each of which had an associated sample dataset that could be downloaded from within the Lab. These pre-made datasets took the onus off the groups to find and collate their own content set – a process that can be lengthy, even in a platform as user-friendly and streamlined as the Lab.
The day was punctuated with short explanations of specific aspects within the Lab workflow, but intentionally avoided hours of front-of-class training – the focus was instead on groups experimenting and exploring the Lab themselves.
Learning from the Ground Up
An event like Hacking History puts the onus for learning on the participants. Combining participants from different disciplines, institutions and levels brings a range of experiences which is incredibly valuable in this collaborative format. As a consequence, the day was filled with organically grown discoveries which were shared with the whole cohort to ensure that all could benefit. By unearthing their own insights, participants were unanimous that their understanding was deeper, and their learning more effective.
Ambitious, Achievable Goals
The outcome of a full day of Hacking History is that each group uses the Lab’s inbuilt Notebook and Projects features to develop a research project. At Oxford, every group had five minutes to present their project to their peers and be judged by a panel of experts from Coventry University, Oxford and Gale.
It’s always inspiring to see participants, some of whom described themselves as total DH novices at the beginning of the day, presenting a full digital research project that they’ve developed in a day.
Gale Oxford Digital Humanities Fellows
To finish the day, all participants were invited to a series of Lightning Talks from the four current Gale Oxford Digital Humanities fellows. Following an introduction from Professor Dave De Roure, Director of Digital Scholarship @ Oxford, they heard from Rong Zhou, Nobuhiko Kikuchi, Christopher Warren and Thai-Catherine Matthews on the research they’re currently engaged in during their fellowship.
The Value of Hackathons to Teaching Digital Humanities
With the ongoing challenge to articulate the value of humanities education, developing digital literacies alongside subject teaching is more important than ever. Naturally, departments are turning to digital humanities to provide experience of working with large datasets, critical analysis of algorithms and data visualisation.
This drive for more digital in the humanities pushes us to think about how these techniques are taught. As we’ve seen with Hacking History, hackathons give participants a low-stakes environment to collaborate, build academic networks, learn methodologies and tools. Best of all, they provide space to develop tangible projects which pique attendees’ interest and provide a framework they can take into their own research.
If you enjoyed reading about the Hacking History workshop at Oxford, you may like the posts below, or the blog post series ‘Notes from our DH Correspondent’:
- Hacking History with Gale Digital Scholar Lab (about the first Hacking History event in Loyola, Illinois)
- Discovering Dynamic Tales: How Digital Archives and Tools Transform History into Engaging Narratives
- A Two-Way Relationship – Collaborating with Scholars in the Gale Fellowship Program
