About 40 scholars, postgraduate students and researchers in Humanities & Social Sciences, media professionals and freelancers from all over the country are participating in this fortnight-long workshop to deliberate and reflect on various aspects of digital studies.

The digital revolution has touched every aspect, every area of human lives. Humanities education is no different. The Winter Institute in Digital Humanities (WIDH), an international workshop jointly designed and offered by IITGN and the University of Saskatchewan (USask), was formally inaugurated today at IITGN campus.

Prof Arnapurna Rath, faculty, Humanities and Social Sciences at IITGN and organiser of this workshop, welcomed the guests and the participants and gave a thematic introduction of the Winter Institute. She presented the philosophy that drives a complete interdisciplinary approach that combines technology with humanities, social sciences, and media-related questions.

Prof Jim Clifford, faculty in History at the USask and lead collaborator of WIDH, gave the context of the workshop and explained how everybody has become a digital scholar now, with the enormous use of Google, internet archives and all kinds of digital tools and databases.

The Guest of Honour, Dr Prachi Kaul, director, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI) India Office, encouraged participants to understand and be open towards the diverse range of thoughts emerging from different academic perspectives. She congratulated both the institutes for organising this workshop.

Prof Sudhir K Jain, director, IITGN and Patron of Winter Institute in Digital Humanities, chaired the session. He emphasised on how IITGN as a young institution has focused on its core strengths such as youth, ambition, hope and opportunity to create something new. He encouraged students to learn digital humanities from global faculty and 23 speakers from across India.

The Winter Institute is slated to function during December 8-22. It is supported by the SICI and Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The focal areas of this workshop are textual scholarship, social media and ethics, theories of digital media, network society, digital archiving, open-access digital scholarship, digital tools, project management, diversity and digital humanities, text-encoding initiatives, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Spatial Humanities.

ITGN is one of the proudest international partners of USask. It is a great accomplishment for IITGN as a technical institution to organise institutes on topics such as global health, social justice and digital humanities.

Prof Raj Srinivasan

Faculty Member in Mathematics & Statistics, USask and Mentor, WIDH workshop

Interdisciplinarity, breaking silos, transparency and inclusivity have been our guiding values. This winter school encompasses all the things that IITGN believes in. It is focused on students, it is interdisciplinary, and inclusive of a diversity of students from across the country.

Prof Sudhir K. Jain

Director, IITGN, and Patron, Winter Institute in Digital Humanities

The idea and nuances of digital humanities that are going to be discussed in these two weeks’ time will build up young minds, integrate arts, humanities and social science, help the participants take this knowledge forward and open opportunities in life.

Dr Prachi Kaul

Director, SICI India Office and Guest of Honour

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