Courses

7,5 ECTS, 100% pace

Dates: 16 Oct (Week 42) - 27 Jan (Week 5)

The doctoral/advanced level course “Introduction to Cultural Analytics” (7.5 ECTS) is offered by the Department of ALM and Centre for Digital Humanities Uppsala (CDHU). The course is part of the Graduate School in Digital Humanities (DASH) and runs from 16 October 2025 to 27 January 2026. Course sessions will run remotely on Zoom and include one contact day at campus Engelska Parken (Uppsala University).

The course coordinator is Amanda Wasielewski (amanda.wasielewski@abm.uu.se). Please contact Amanda if you are interested in taking the course or would like to have more information. Registration closes 5 Oct.

Instructors: Marie Dubremetz (marie.dubremetz@abm.uu.se), Sushruth Badri (sushruth.badri@abm.uu.se), and Adam Maen (adam.maen@abm.uu.se)

The course is targeted towards PhD students in the humanities and social sciences who do not yet possess specific computational or technical skills, but who are interested to learn more for their future thesis work. The aim of the course is to introduce DH methods from a humanities and social sciences perspective. After completing the course, students are expected to have gained the following knowledge and skills: familiarity with computational text analysis methods and their relevance for humanities and social sciences tasks, knowledge about machine learning and its basic concepts (as well as such methods’ possibilities and limitations), practical skills to employ computational methods for text analysis by using existing software, and, by following and adapting basic programming scripts, the ability to critically reflect upon the results derived from computational methods (regarding ethical, statistical, and empirical/material-oriented concerns). The course consists of the following thematic areas: introduction to cultural analytics and Python, data collection (web scraping, APIs, social media), natural language processing and computational text analysis, and computer vision.

SCHEDULE OVERVIEW

BLOCK 1: Cultural Analytics in Theory and Practice

• 16 October 10:00-12:00: Lecture/Discussion: What is Cultural Analytics? Theory and Practice of Quantitative Methods in Cultural Studies (Amanda Wasielewski) (remote)
• 23 October 13:00-16:00: Workshop: Python crash course (Adam Maen) (remote)

BLOCK 2: On-site day: Web-scraping and Data collection (21 November)

Engelska Parken, Uppsala University, Room TBD

• Lecture/Discussion: Web-based data and its implications (Amanda Wasielewski) (1 hrs) 9:00-10:00
• Workshop: “Gathering data through web scraping and APIs” (Marie Dubremetz, CDHU) (2 hrs) 10:15-12:00
• Workshop: “Data collection and web scraping lab” (Marie Dubremetz) (3 hrs) 13:00-16:00

BLOCK 3: Analyzing Texts, Working with Language Models

• 1 December 10:00-12:00: Lecture/Discussion: Contextualizing large language models and NLP (Amanda Wasielewski) (remote)
• 2 December 10:00-12:00 : Lecture/Workshop: “Basics of NLP, core concepts and applied methods” (Marie Dubremetz) (remote)
• 9 December 10:00-12:00: Workshop: “Machine Learning with text lab” (Sushruth Badri) (remote)

BLOCK 4: Visual and multimedia material

• Tuesday, 13 January 10:00-12:00: Lecture/Workshop: Introduction to Computer Vision (Amanda Wasielewski) (remote)
• Thursday, 15 January 13:00-16:00: Workshop: OpenCV workshop (Adam Maen) (remote)

FINAL SEMINAR: presentations/discussion and final paper due, January 27, 10:00-12:00

7,5 ECTS, 100% pace

Dates: 29/9, 2/10, 16/10, 21/10, 28/10

The course will take place at campus Engelska Parken, Uppsala University at the Department of ALM.

The course is a master’s level course which includes advanced study elements tailored for PhD students that expand the course to a doctoral level course. It introduces and examines a selection of tools and methods used in the cross-disciplinary field of the digital humanities. Students will become familiar with and use digital methods and tools by participating in several practical sessions. The focus of this course is on sampling different DH methods: webscraping, text analysis, and basic computer vision. This course is suitable for those who would like more practical experience with DH methods.

If you are interested in taking the course or would like to have more information, please contact the course coordinator Amanda Wasielewski, amanda.wasielewski@abm.uu.se.

This is a crash course targeted towards both faculty and PhD students in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in gaining a basic understanding of programming and some practical knowledge on how to use the Python language. During the course you will also learn how to install and work with JupyterLab which is a modern interactive development environment for “literate coding” where you can seamlessly combine written research notes with code, and data. This flexible interface allows users to process workflows in data science, scientific computing, computational journalism, and machine learning – but it is also suitable for data-driven research within the humanities and social sciences.

More about the course.

This course envisions unlocking the future potential digital technology for meaningful heritage practices. The aim is to study the current challenges and implications that may arise to provide actionable knowledge on heritage institutions more generally, but also to potentially inspire the deeper study and implementation of digital methods and tools for historical and cultural inquiry.

The course is offered in partnership with Umeå University. Find out more about the course and how to apply.

Autumn 2023

• Introduction to Cultural Analytics

Spring 2023

• Reconstructing/deconstructing cultural heritage

Autumn 2022

• Introduction to Cultural Analytics pdf, 94 kB.
• Python for Beginners pdf, 106 kB.