AHRC opportunity profile: Putting digital and social under the microscope

What does the Arab Spring have in common with 3D printing? Both are examples of what the Arts and Humanities Research Council calls Digital Transformations, and the council is looking for big projects to fund. Penny Sarchet talks technology and social change with theme leader Andrew Prescott, head of digital humanities at King's College London.

What does the digital transformations theme involve?

It’s really looking at the ways in which we can explore new technological advances to develop different transformative ways of approaching scholarship in the arts and humanities. A good example is bio-conductive ink. It’s paint or ink that will conduct electricity to be used for circuit boards. As a manuscript scholar, that is fascinating, because if you change the nature and function of ink, then you change everything. That’s an unexpected transformation. We are used to the idea of data, and in dealing with data on a screen, but if you have ink that can deal with data you can approach that information in completely different ways. You might also look at some of the things coming out from 3D printing, and the way some researchers are using 3D printing to represent graphical data in different ways.