We seek participants interested in developing a conceptual foundation for understanding the assumptions made in common DH methods, such as statistics, network analysis, and text mining and analysis. The workshops will introduce participants to mathematical notation, theories, and application using a learner-centered, case-study approach, contextualizing each lesson with real humanities data and questions. We seek a diverse cohort of participants doing DH research, instruction, and/or related scholarship who wish to learn about the mathematics behind common DH methods, especially those who have not had access to this training before.

The next three workshops will be held online and in person, hosted by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in summer 2025. Additional courses will be held online in 2026. Accepted participants to the online workshops will receive a small stipend. Accepted participants to the in person workshop will have their travel, food, and lodging expenses covered.

Participants in previous workshops are welcome and encouraged to apply to attend additional workshops, however, no previous mathematics experience beyond the high school level is necessary for these workshops. No coding experience is required.

2025 Online Workshop Descriptions

Online workshops will be a mix of asynchronous and synchronous instructions. Participants should be prepared to do some readings and watch videos in advance of the workshops. Synchronous instructional time will be focused on hands-on and collaborative activities with independent assignments between synchronous instruction sessions each day.

Discrete Mathematics, July 11-13, 2025

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to understand the basic principles of sets and operations in sets; prove basic set equalities; apply counting principles to determine probabilities; demonstrate an understanding of relations and functions to be able to determine their properties; demonstrate traversal methods for trees and graphs; and model problems using graphs and trees. Participants will learn each of these concepts and skills in the context of a real humanities data set. By the end of the workshop, they will be able to describe and demonstrate how fundamental topics in Discrete Mathematics relate to common DH methods like network analysis and advanced natural language processing.

Statistics, July 25-27, 2025

Participants will learn to program in R to run statistical tests and write functions to express statistical ideas in a guided, scaffolded, and structured way. Prior to the workshop, participants will download and install R and RStudio, and the instructor will offer virtual office hours to troubleshoot any installation issues. During the workshop, participants will learn how to create data visualizations, as well as calculate and interpret the meaning of measures of central tendency, variance, hypothesis tests, and other statistical methods in response to humanistic questions with quantitative and qualitative (categorical) data.

Graphs and Networks, August 15-17, 2025

Participants will learn to construct and analyze graphs and networks using real-world examples related to humanistic questions and research agendas. Throughout the workshop, participants will become familiar with the mathematical concepts that are foundational to networks as they learn to format network data, analyze and interpret network structures. They will emerge from this workshop with a knowledge of the relationship between graphs and networks; the underlying mathematical concepts of a network; how to format humanities data for network analysis; and how to quantitatively analyze and interpret network structures. They will also be introduced to popular cross-platform digital humanities tools for the visualization and analysis of networks.

2025 In Person Workshop Description

In person workshops will be a mix of classroom instruction and homework assignments. Participants should also be prepared to do some readings and prep work in advance of the workshops. Travel days will be August 3rd and 8th, 2025.

Linear Algebra, August 4-7, 2025

Linear algebra concepts are foundational to advanced network analysis and statistics. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to solve systems of linear equations; perform matrix algebra; understand determinants and their properties; understand real vector spaces and apply their properties; compute linear transformations; find eigenvalues and eigenvectors and use them in network analysis applications. Participants will learn each of these concepts and skills in the context of a real humanities data set. By the end of the workshop, they will be able to describe and demonstrate how fundamental topics in Linear Algebra relate to common DH methods like network analysis.

2025 Workshop Instructors

Jessica Otis is an Assistant Professor of History and a director at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. She is both a digital humanist and an historian of mathematics, who received her M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Virginia before pursuing a Ph.D. in History. She is experienced at teaching mathematics to humanist audiences, including the network analysis course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, the history of mathematics as an undergraduate course in both departments of mathematics and history, and introductory calculus courses for non-major undergraduate students.

Ashley Sanders is an independent contractor in data science & digital humanities and former Vice Chair of Digital Humanities at UCLA, where she offered courses in applied statistics for humanistic research, text analysis, and computational humanistic research. Her book project, Visualizing History’s Fragments (Palgrave, June 2024) is an introduction to computational methods situated in a historical case study and based on her rich instructional and educational research experience. Prior to graduate school, Ashley worked in mathematics education research for four years at Western Michigan University, taught mathematics at Kalamazoo Central High School and served on the district’s mathematics curriculum committee for two years. She holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialization in Digital Humanities from Michigan State University and a B.S. in both History and Mathematics Secondary Education from Western Michigan University.

William J. Turkel is Professor of History at The University of Western Ontario and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (2018-25). His work in digital history includes serving as the project director for digital infrastructure for NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment (2004-15), co-founding the Programming Historian, developing the open text and course Digital Research Methods with Mathematica (2nd rev ed 2020), and acting as PI or co-PI for fifteen SSHRC-funded digital humanities grants totalling about $3.5M in funding. He has been programming, and teaching programming, for forty-five years.

Applications

We welcome anyone doing DH research, pedagogy, and/or related scholarship who wishes to learn about the mathematics behind common DH methods. Participants may include but are not limited to people working at non-profits and cultural heritage institutes; tenure-line faculty, contingent faculty, and advanced graduate students from university and college humanities and humanistic social science departments; librarians, archivists, and museum staff; and independent scholars and creators. We particularly encourage applications from people in traditionally underrepresented, marginalized, and disempowered groups.

We are committed to creating accessible workshops. Anyone who wishes to discuss accessibility before applying may contact jotis2@gmu.edu and we will touch base with all accepted participants about any accessibility needs this spring.

The call for applications for the 2025 workshops is now open and available until February 15, 2025, 11:59PM Eastern. Applicants who wish to apply to more than one workshop should apply separately for each workshop.

Apply by emailing a 1-page statement of interest, which explains why attending the specific workshop you are applying for will be beneficial to you, to jotis2@gmu.edu

Acceptance notifications will be sent in early April.

Find out more at the project website: https://MathHumanists.org