James Smithies

I am Professor of Digital Humanities & Director of the HASS Digital Research Hub (HDRH) at The Australian University. Before ANU I was Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. Before then I was founding director of King's Digital Lab and deputy director of King's eResearch. Prior to working at King's I worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa/New Zealand, helping develop the UC CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive. My doctorate explored the history of ideas in late twentieth-century Aotearoa/New Zealand. I have also worked in the government and commercial IT sectors in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, as a technical writer, editor, business analyst, and project manager. 

In my digital practice I apply computational tools and methods to arts, humanities, and social science subjects. This involves the development of products (like websites, electronic books, or mobile applications), the analysis of data (like text, image, and social media archives) and the provision of services (like digital libraries and archives) that can be used to explore subjects as varied as history, literature, philosophy, art history, statistics, and computer science. This sort of work results in traditional scholarly articles and monographs as well as digital outputs. I am interested in any research that involves the innovative application of computational tools and methods to arts, humanities, and social science subjects, and often work in inter-disciplinary teams from across the campus. I have additional experience applying information management techniques to post-disaster contexts.