Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship

Failure is ordinary. From technological failures and computational obsolescence to rejected applications and challenging collaborations, failure is an unavoidable part of any scholarly endeavour. This is especially true for digital scholarship, as the everyday risk of failure is compounded by the challenges of interdisciplinary research and fragility of digital technology. Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship tackles what failure – in all its messy but immensely valuable complexity – means for the digital humanities community head-on. It brings together a diverse, interdisciplinary and international group of scholars and practitioners that each offer short personal and professional reflections on the failed, broken or challenging aspects of scholarly practice. It provides a critical perspective on the ways institutional and material conditions are intractably linked to approaches to digital research, and how those conditions differ within and across national contexts. In creating a critical, constructive and compassionate vocabulary for failure, this book normalises failure as an object of inquiry, asking: if there is value in failure in digital scholarship, how do we create the space to fail ‘better’?

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Reframing failure Anna-Maria Sichani and Michael Donnay Part I Innovation 1 Stop lying to yourself: Collective delusion and Digital Humanities grant funding Quinn Dombrowski 2 Risk, failure and the assessment of innovative research Jane Winters 3 Innovation, tools, and ecology Christopher Ohge 4 Software at play David De Roure Part II Technology 5 Brokenness is social Frances Corry 6 A career in ruins? Accepting imperfection and celebrating failures in digital preservation and digital archaeology Jenny Mitcham 7 Living well with brokenness in an inclusive research culture: what we can learn from failures and processes in a Digital Humanities lab Arianna Ciula 8 Can we be failing? Joris J. van Zundert Part III Collaboration 9 Doing, failing, learning: understanding what didn’t work as a key research finding in action research Arran J. Rees 10 Navigating the challenges and opportunities of collaboration Jennifer Stertzer 11 Challenging the pipeline structure: a reflection on the organisational flow of interdisciplinary projects Caio Mello 12 When optimisation fails us Jentery Sayers 13 Reframing ‘reframing’: A holistic approach to understanding failure Lauren Tuckley Part IV Institutions 14 Permission to experiment with literature as data and fail in the process Jennifer Isasi 15 What to do with failure? (What does failure do?) Brittany Amell 16 The remaining alternatives Elena Spadini 17 Who fails and why? Understanding the systemic causes of failure within and beyond the Digital Humanities Naomi Wells 18 Experimental publishing: Acknowledging, addressing, and embracing failure Janneke Adema 19 Writing about research methods: sharing failure to support success Anisa Hawes and Riva Quiroga 20 Bridging the distance: Confronting geographical failures in Digital Humanities conferences Nabeel Siddiqui Conclusion: On failing Anna-Maria Sichani and Michael Donnay

About the Author :
Anna-Maria Sichani is a BRAID Research Fellow and a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at School of Advanced Study, University of London. She has held postdoctoral positions at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex. Previously, she was awarded a UKRI Policy and Engagement Fellowship in Digital Research and Innovation Infrastructure, as well as a Fellowship with the Software Sustainability Institute. She has also collaborated on national and international projects and infrastructures in digital cultural heritage and digital humanities, and has published extensively in these fields. Her research focuses on data-intensive research and emerging technologies, including AI, in the arts, humanities, and the wider cultural heritage and information environment, with a focus towards open, responsible, ethical, and sustainable research, alongside interests in media history, research infrastructures, and digital pedagogy. Michael Donnay is a Community Manager at the Software Sustainability Institute, where he supports the Society of Research Software Engineering and works on projects related to research culture and evaluation. Previously he worked at the School of Advanced Study, University of London where he helped establish the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association. He was the 2022 Ruth Watts Fellow with the History of Education Society, hosting their podcast on interdisciplinary work in the history of education, and has written on the history of science for Nature Chemistry. His research interests include creative-critical making, research project management and social network analysis.

Review :
'Failure' is too easily understood as a function of the single individual. If we are going to have a more humane digital humanities, we all of us need to learn how to understand failure(s). We need perspective, compassion, and clarity. We need, in fact, this volume. —Shawn M. Graham, Professor of Digital Humanities, Carleton University, Canada.