Computer scientists are from Mars, historians are from Venus

Digital humanities projects show how fields can misunderstand one another—and how to get past that—says Max Kemman.

A growing number of projects in the humanities are developing digital tools that allow scholars to explore and analyse datasets numbering millions of pages. Such projects necessitate collaborations with fields such as computer science, computational linguistics or software development.

These interdisciplinary efforts have led to innovative tools. But, as my research on interdisciplinary collaborations in the digital humanities shows, they have also run into unexpected problems.