Cultural Analytics: Understanding Today's Digital World

Image for Cultural Analytics: Understanding Today's Digital World
Analysis of Twitter after terrorist attacks.

Digital Studio Level 3, West Wing Arts West Building 148

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Digital Studio

digital-studio@unimelb.edu.au

Professor Juan Luis Suárez
Director, CulturePlex Lab

Cultural Analytics has emerged as an area of collaborative research focused on deciphering the main components and metrics to understand human behaviour in the digital age. Populated by humanists, social scientists and scientists from different labs and groups around the world, the goal of all of them is to develop the tools, concepts and measurements that help us navigate what is going today in what looks like an inexplicable new world of individual and collective behaviours. The talk will explore the main trends in the field and will show some examples of current ongoing research at The CulturePlex Lab (Western U., Canada). The CulturePlex Lab is a multi-disciplinary facility that researches culture analytics and digital innovation. The team is made up of humanists, computer scientists, mathematicians, entrepreneurs, engineers and designers who come together to solve complex problems. Their toolbox includes design thinking, modelling, big data, network analysis, agent-based simulations, digital anthropology and traditional humanistic approaches.

Professor Juan Luis Suárez is a Professor of Digital Humanities and Computer Science at Western University, Ontario, where he is also Professor in Hispanic Studies. He is also Director of the CulturePlex Lab - one of Canada's leading centres for digital research and innovation within the humanities (www.cultureplex.ca). His publications include: Technologies of Humanism. The Evolution of Spanish Humanism (Tecnologías del humanismo. La evolución del humanismo español) 2011; Protheus' Heirs. A Theory on Spanish Humanism. (Herederos de Proteo. Una teoría del humanismo español) 2008; and Staging Imagination. Calderón's Theatre (El escenario de la imaginación. Calderón en su teatro) 2002. He has also edited special issue journal on "Complexity and Its Sciences", Revista de Occidente, April 2008 and co-edited "Calderón's Virtual Worlds", Anuario Calderoniano5, 2012. He has just completed the book The Digital Humanist (El humanista digital).

Image: Analysis of Twitter after terrorist attacks. Source: CulturePlex Lab.


The Digital Studio's lunchtime seminar series showcases research projects of internal and visiting academics from across the digital humanities, arts and social sciences. Bring your lunch and your appetite for engaging research.