Course Catalogue

View Specification Document | Reading List

Data plays an increasingly vital role in how we understand and represent culture, society, and history. For researchers in the humanities, engaging critically with data offers new ways to ask questions, uncover patterns, and communicate insights. This course introduces key concepts and practical methods in data analysis, visualisation, and communication within a digital humanities framework. Students will work with diverse types of data-textual, visual, spatial, and numerical-to explore how digital tools can support interpretation and storytelling. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to analyse, visualise, and communicate data effectively and ethically in their own research and practice.

1x1hr lecture and 1x1hr seminar or lab session per week as scheduled in MyCampus

None

INFOST4003 Data Analysis, Visualisation and Communication

Project Output (including dataset, analysis outputs, visualisations and documentation), 2000 words, 60%

Report, 1500 words, 40%

This course aims to:

■ Deliver a critical introduction to the field of data science and its applications in humanities scholarship

■ Provide a grounding on the main principles of data and best practice of data analysis, with emphasis on research methodologies

■ Explain advanced methods for data analysis, visualisation methods, and its use for scholarly communication

■ Critically examine the research potentials and theoretical implications of data analysis in humanities disciplines

■ Introduce and critically evaluate standard and emerging techniques for analysing, visualising and communicating data

■ Critically analyse how data analysis methods are transforming humanities scholarship and the epistemological implications of computational approaches to cultural materials

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Critically formulate original research questions and evaluate how data analysis methodologies can be appropriately and rigorously applied to answer these in humanities contexts

2. Critically assess how data analysis is transforming epistemological and methodological approaches in humanities scholarship, with awareness of current debates and forefront developments

3. Demonstrate extensive competence in exploring, analysing, manipulating, interpreting and visualising complex data using advanced data science techniques, software and technologies, including at specialised or forefront levels

4. Design, justify and implement sophisticated methods to visualise information based on data analysis, demonstrating originality in approach and critical awareness of audience, purpose and interpretive implications

5. Critically evaluate and apply standards and best practices accepted by the research community, with awareness of their limitations and emerging developments

6. Develop, critically test, and theoretically justify innovative methods to communicate research outcomes based on data analysis, demonstrating critical reflection on the relationship between method, interpretation and knowledge claims