These research centers, laboratories, and workshops provide valuable resources and services of interest to the students and faculty of the Program in Digital Studies of Language, Culture, and History:
Center for Digital Scholarship
- The Center for Digital Scholarship is located on the ground floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library. Its staff help faculty and students to use various digital tools and provide guidance on responsible research methods by offering workshops on data management, data reproducibility, and data licensing.
Center for Spatial Data Science
- The Center for Spatial Data Science in the Division of Social Sciences develops state-of-the-art methods for geospatial analysis; implements them through open source software tools; applies them to policy-relevant research in the social sciences; and disseminates them through education and support to a growing worldwide community of over 330,000 spatial analysts.
Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science
- The Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science is an annual conference that brings together researchers, scholars, librarians, and technologists in the humanities and computer science from the Chicago area and elsewhere to examine the current state of digital humanities as a field of intellectual inquiry and to identify and explore new directions and perspectives for future research.
- The CHIME Studio (Chicago Integrated Media Experimental Studio) in the Department of Music is a vital creative space for electronic music and its integration with other media.
Computer Science Instructional Laboratory
- The Computer Science Instructional Laboratory is located on the ground floor of the John Crerar Library. It provides students, faculty, and university affiliates with a variety of computing services ranging from hardware support to computer software and mini-course lessons.
- The Digital Humanities Forum convenes several times a year, bringing together faculty and students from across the campus to discuss the latest methods and trends in digital humanities around the world. Speakers from the University of Chicago and from outside the University present their research and stimulate lively conversations about the connections between digital technology and humanistic inquiry. The talks are open to the public and lunch is provided.
- The Digital Media Archive holds some 2,100 language collections across 270 languages. Many of these collections are freely available for research use and others can be made available by arrangement.
- The Digital Media Workshop is a forum for students and faculty interested in digital media across the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago. Presentations and discussions in this workshop span theoretical scholarship, scientific inquiry, and artistic practice, making it a highly interdisciplinary site for engaging the political, aesthetic, social, cultural, and technical dimensions of digital media across their many formats.
Karen Landahl Center for Linguistics Research
- The Karen Landahl Center for Linguistics Research in the Department of Linguistics offers state-of-the-art facilities that provide a convenient meeting place for faculty, students, and research associates interested in the nature of language. It is housed in the Social Sciences Research Building and is home to several research and teaching laboratories: the Chicago Language Modeling Laboratory, which works on the computational implementation of linguistic models and the discovery of learning algorithms for those models; the Phonology Laboratory, which is dedicated to the teaching and investigation of phonological typology as well as the variation and change of sound systems; the Language Processing Laboratory, which focuses on experimental syntax, experimental semantics and pragmatics, and psycholinguistics; the Sign Language Linguistics Laboratory, which analyzes linguistic data from sign languages and gestures; and the Language in Time and Space Research Group, which conducts research on under-described languages in fieldwork settings, focusing on cross-linguistic analysis, diversity, variation and change, language contact, the language and cognition interface, and how cultural and geographic features might be reflected in language use and discourse.
Media Arts, Data, and Design Center
- The Media Arts, Data, and Design Center is a 20,000-square-foot collaborative space for inquiry and experimentation on the ground floor of the John Crerar Library. It supports research and design activities by faculty, students, staff, and community partners using cutting-edge technology. Within this center are the Hack Arts Lab, an open-access digital fabrication, prototyping, and visualization facility, and the Weston Game Lab, which offers resources for the study, play, and development of analog, electronic, virtual, and online games.
- The OCHRE Data Service provides consultation, training, and support for the use of the Online Cultural and Historical Research Environment (OCHRE), a powerful computational platform for integrating, analyzing, publishing, and preserving all kinds of cultural and historical information—textual, visual, sonic, spatial, and temporal—in all of its digital forms. The OCHRE platform is particularly well suited to working with the heterogeneous, incomplete, and semi-structured forms of data encountered in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
- The Research Computing Center provides resources and training for high-performance computing, data storage, and data visualization across all departments and divisions of the University. The Kathleen A. Zar Room on the ground floor of the John Crerar Library houses the Research Computing Center’s Data Visualization Lab, which provides advanced data visualization technology, instructional sessions, symposiums, and workshops. The Kathleen A. Zar Room also houses the GIS Hub, which facilitates geospatial research and learning activities by providing access to Geographic Information System (GIS) software and hardware and an expert GIS and maps librarian who provides consultation and training.
- The Textual Optics Lab applies digital methods to literary and historical studies. It incorporates the ARTFL Project and the Chicago Text Lab and focuses on the conceptual and practical issues entailed in scalable reading of large numbers of texts, drawing on a variety of qualitative and computational methods.
