K is for Kent Maps Online
Digital Humanities (DH) is the nexus where computing and digital technology meets with the disciplines of the humanities. It is a new and exciting way of undertaking scholarship that involves collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and digitally involved research and its dissemination. Digital tools and methods are used to enhance the impact of the humanities as main media for knowledge creation and distribution adapt and change.
A major digital humanities project at CCCU is our Kent Maps Project, an international collaboration between JSTOR* Labs and the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW) at Christ Church. The project’s on-line site provides a set of themed essays about Kent, the county in which the university is located and serves. Kent has a rich history and has provided inspiration for a numerous artists and writers of both fiction and fact, including the famous figures of Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.
The JSTOR Labs team provide the tools and infrastructure for presenting the essays with interactive visualizations; these are generated from annotations inserted in the text by the essay authors. The visualizations include interactive maps with feature overlays that provide context for associated paragraphs in the essay. Much of the data used in the contextualized visualizations is obtained from open access knowledge graphs such as Wikidata, the primary data source behind Wikipedia.
Framed by the idea of ‘writers and their times’, the project is researching historic, literary, and geographical records to create an interactive experience seen through multi-disciplinary lenses. This approach contextualises literature and textual records of historic events through an emphasis on the material conditions in which they were produced and circulated.
But rather than simply recreating a historic experience, the research aims to problematise the ways in which we interpret and represent the past and present. What do we think we know about the history of local landscapes (including their geology and topography)? How do conflicting perspectives and gaps in the record remind us that representation is always selective and that history — is just that — a story we tell others and ourselves? Some of this story has direct links with the sciences (see themed section on ‘Mathematicians and Scientists’ with detailed biographies of the mathematicians, botanists, chemists, and naturalists) as well as reference to H.G. Wells who anticipated scientific advances in his fiction. Links with science are also examined through shifts in technical practices in industry, transport, agriculture, and defence as they impacted on writers and artists.
As the map grows so too will the capacity for making unforeseen connections. While the project inevitably reflects the interests of the research team, it is highly collaborative and is not designed to showcase or privilege any one argument over another. Instead, it has been designed to help you find your own answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet!
*JSTOR provides a research and teaching platform that helps libraries connect students and faculty with vital academic content and provide independent researchers with free and low-cost access to scholarship, and preserve important content for future generations. JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Michelle Crowther is the Learning & Research Librarian for humanities, language studies and applied linguistics. She is Co-Lead for Kent-maps online in collaboration with JSTOR Labs. She teaches students “how to search 19th century periodicals, marking hyptertext up and down, or chasing Dickens around a virtual map”, She is also undertaking a PhD in Victorian literature.
Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature, School of Humanities & Educational Studies and Centre for Kent History and Heritage at CCCU. She is Co-Lead for Kent-maps online. Her current research is on Victorian practices of shared reading.
Further reading
Crowther, M. (2019) ‘Walking the path of desire: evaluating a blended learning approach to developing study skills in a multi-disciplinary group’, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 14, https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/475/pd:
Oulton, C. (2022) Down from London: Seaside Reading in the Railway Age, Liverpool University Press.
