Resources & Publications

Our team has published the following academic texts on oral history and the history of computing in the historical and humanites disciplines. Open access versions (where they exist) are linked to below. A zotero group with direct access to texts and their bibliographical metadata can be joined here.

Books

Book cover Computation and the Humanities

Nyhan, J., & Flinn, A. (2016). Computation and the Humanities: Towards an Oral History of Digital Humanities. Springer International Publishing.

Book cover On Making in the Digital Humanities: The scholarship of digital humanities development in honour of John Bradley

Nyhan, J., Rockwell, G., Sinclair, S., & Ortolja-Baird, A. (Eds.). (2023). On Making in the Digital Humanities: The scholarship of digital humanities development in honour of John Bradley. UCL Press.

Book cover One Origin of Digital Humanities: Fr Roberto Busa in His Own Words

Nyhan, J., & Passarotti, M. (Eds.). (2019). One Origin of Digital Humanities: Fr Roberto Busa in His Own Words. Springer International Publishing.

Book cover Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities

Nyhan, J. (2022). Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities: On the Index Thomisticus Project 1954-67. Routledge.

Articles

Journal Cover Democratising Access? The interface of new technologies and archived life stories

Flinn, A., Boyd, D., Morgan, C., & Nyhan, J. (2024). Democratising Access? The interface of new technologies and archived life stories. Oral History Journal: The Life Story in Oral History Practice, 52(3), 102–109.

Journal Cover Oral History and the Hidden Histories project: Towards histories of computing in the humanities

Nyhan, J., Flinn, A., & Welsh, A. (2015). Oral History and the Hidden Histories project: Towards histories of computing in the humanities. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 30(1), 71–85.

Journal Cover Exploring the possibilities of Thomson’s fourth paradigm transformation - The case for a multimodal approach to digital oral history?

Smyth, H. K., Nyhan, J., & Flinn, A. (2023). Exploring the possibilities of Thomson’s fourth paradigm transformation - The case for a multimodal approach to digital oral history? Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38(2), 720–736.

Book Chapters

Book Cover Introduction, or why busa still matters

Passarotti, M., & Nyhan, J. (2019). Introduction, or why busa still matters. In J. Nyhan & M. Passarotti (Eds.), One Origin of Digital Humanities: Fr Roberto Busa in His Own Words (pp. 1–17). Springer International Publishing.

Book Cover “A Tall, Stooping Figure in Black Crossing the Courtyard”: Philip Barras’ Recollections of Roberto Busa S.J.

Barras, P., & Nyhan, J. (2019). “A Tall, Stooping Figure in Black Crossing the Courtyard”: Philip Barras’ Recollections of Roberto Busa S.J. In J. Nyhan & M. Passarotti (Eds.), One Origin of Digital Humanities: Fr Roberto Busa in His Own Words (pp. 221–227). Springer International Publishing.

Book Cover The history of the ‘techie’ in the history of digital humanities

Nyhan, J. (2023). The history of the ‘techie’ in the history of digital humanities. In J. Nyhan, G. Rockwell, S. Sinclair, & A. Ortolja-Baird (Eds.), On Making in the Digital Humanities: The scholarship of digital humanities development in honour of John Bradley (pp. 129–147). UCL Press.

Book Cover Oral History and the (Digital) Humanities

Nyhan, J., & Flinn, A. (2022). Oral History and the (Digital) Humanities. In H. Paul (Ed.), Writing the History of the Humanities: Questions, Themes, and Approaches (pp. 153–170). Bloomsbury Academic.

Workshops

Lecture series

Lecture series cover Voices Unbound: Lecture Series on Digital Oral History (2024)

A lecture series co-organised by TU Darmstadt, University College London, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. We invited speakers to present work on recent technological developments that may hold promise for digital oral history. The seminar series aims to appeal to (digital) oral historians, digital humanists and scholars of the history of information, memory and knowledge systems.

Lecture series cover Multimodal Digital Oral History (2022)

This seminar series was organised by the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, University of Gothenburg, TU Darmstadt, and University College London. Multimodal Digital Oral History engages with oral history artefacts in all their representational modalities: transcript, sound, waveform, metadata and more. They are positioned as analytical categories of inquiry and also as sites of data-driven analysis; where reflexivity is a core aspect of digitally-mediated research; and as an endeavour that nevertheless remains attuned to oral history as a subjective and intersubjective meaning-making process, situated in space, time, culture and technology.

Peer-reviewed and invited conference papers

Possibilities / impossibilities for shared authority in the digital oral history paradigm?

Flinn, A., & Nyhan, J. (2025). European Social Science History Conference 2025, Leiden, Netherlands.

Towards a multimodal oral history: Prospects and dangers for oral history in the digital age

Nyhan, J. (2024). Korean Oral History Association 15th anniversary symposium, Seoul, South Korea.

Contesting, Remaking, and Reimagining Absence among and with Digital Methods: A 3-Project Based Examination

Nyhan, J. (2024). MPIWG Digital Humanities Brown Bag Lunch, Berlin, Germany.

Exploring uncertainty and laughter in oral histories – multimodal digital oral history approaches

Nyhan, J., & Flinn, A. (2024). 2024 IFPH World Conference of Public History, Belval.

Histories of Digital History: An Integral Part of the History of the Humanities?

Zaagsma, G., Flinn, A., Nyhan, J., Lejeune, E., & Weber, K. (2024). The Making of the Humanities XI, Lund./

New Sources for the History of the Humanities: Exploring oral history sources

Nyhan, J. (2023). History of the Humanities: Stories, Sources, and Challenges Summer school, Leiden, Netherlands.

Democratising access? The interface of new technologies and archived life stories.

Flinn, A., Boyd, D., Morgan, C., & Nyhan, J. (2023). The Life Story in Oral History Practice: A Two-Day International Symposium, London.

Oral History in the Digital Age [Keynote]

Nyhan, J. (2023). International Summer School “Oral History Meets European Studies. Sources, Tools and Methods in the Digital Age”, Luxembourg.

Towards a Digital Hermeneutic Proving Ground? Multimodal Oral History: Prospects and Limits [Keynote]

Nyhan, J. (2023). Digital Hermeneutics II: Sources, Analysis, Interpretation, Annotation, Curation, Hagen.

Where does the history of the Digital Humanities fit in the longer history of the Humanities? Reflections on the historiography of the ‘old’ in the work of Fr Roberto Busa S.J.

Nyhan, J. (2020). The Inevitable Turn: Challenges and Perspectives in Humanities Computing, Milan.

New findings and new questions about the origins of Digital Humanities: On the state of the art of histories of the Index Thomisticus project of Fr Roberto Busa S.J.

Nyhan, J. (2019). Invited Lecture for the ‘New Horizons: Confronting the Digital Turn in the Humanities’ seminar series at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

Voices heard, voices silenced: On hidden contributions to the emergence of Digital Humanities c.1954-67

Nyhan, J. (2018). British Society for the History of Mathematics meeting, History of Computing beyond the computer, Oxford.

Reverse Engineering the First Humanities Computing Center.

Jones, S. E., Nyhan, J., Rockwel, G., Sinclair, S., & Terras, M. (2017). Digital Humanities 2017, Montréal.

The social history of Digital Humanities: An oral history perspective

Nyhan, J. (2017). The Making of the Humanities VI conference, Oxford.

Talks

2017

‘Techies’ versus scholars: Roberto Busa’s Index Thomisticus

Nyhan, J. (2017). Digital Humanities, Siberian Federal University Conference.

The social history of Digital Humanities: an oral history perspective

Nyhan, J. (2017). The Making of the Humanities VI conference. Oxford.

2015

Knowledge organisation systems and Digital Humanities

Nyhan, J. (2015). ISKO. Strasbourg, France. (Keynote)

New paths through the histories of Digital Humanities

Nyhan, J. (2015). International Symposium of Information Science, University of Zadar Croatia

An introduction to the Histories of Digital Humanities

Nyhan, J. (2015). University of Babes-Bolyaiy / Transylvanian Digital Humanities Centre, Romania

Collaboration and Digital Humanities: Two Studies and a Plea

Nyhan J. (2015). Technospaces, University of Darmstadt, Germany

Merging technology and historical research: Future Archives

Nyhan, J. (2015). TALK ART/TALK SOCIETY, Finnish Institute in London.

2014

Digital Humanities: origins and future directions

Nyhan J. (2014). Research seminar, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Collaboration and Digital Humanities: past, present and future

Nyhan, J. (2014). Transforming Digital Methods conference, University of Exeter.

Whose project is this? Participatory oral history

Flinn, A; Nyhan, J. (2014). Community Voices: Oral History on the Ground.

2013

Memory, narrative and disciplinary identity

Nyhan, J. (2013). Faculty lecture

Hidden histories: computing in the Humanities

Nyhan, J. (2013). Digital Humanities 2013, University of Nebraska-Illinois, USA.

Through memories and times

Nyhan, J. (2013). Les Humanités Délivrées / Humanities Unbound.

2012

Hidden histories: pilot project overview

Nyhan, J. (2012). Digital Humanities Congress 2012.

Digital Humanities: histories or memories?

Nyhan, J. (2012). Leipzig University, European Summer School lecture.

History of computing in the Humanities

Nyhan, J. (2012). University College Cork, Historical Sciences Seminar.

What is oral history in DH?

Nyhan, J. (2012). Universitatet Trier, Digital Humanities Seminar Series

2011

Hidden Histories: 1949–1980 pilot study

Nyhan, J., Welsh, A., Theobald, M. (2011). London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship.

Further research by team members that is thematically or methodologically related, but does not formally belong to one of the OHL projects, is listed below.

The Semantics of Emotion: Exploring Synonym Rings to Evaluate Emotive Contexts in Translations Across Sinhala and English

Alahapperuma, M., & Vlachidis, A. (2025). In M. Sfakakis, E. Garoufallou, M. Damigos, A. Salaba, & C. Papatheodorou (Eds), Metadata and Semantic Research (pp. 349–362). Springer Nature Switzerland.

Decentralising digital humanities: Exploring blockchain technology and ‘web3’ for the Sloane Lab and Towards a National Collection (TaNC)

Valeonti, F., Vlachidis, A., Nyhan, J., Bikakis, A., Kotarski, R., & Jovanovic, P. (2025). Journal of Documentation, 81(1).

Socio-cultural challenges in collections digital infrastructures

Humbel, M., Nyhan, J., Pearlman, N., Vlachidis, A., Hill, J. D., & Flinn, A. (2024). Journal of Documentation, 81(1), 56–85.

Investigating absences in cultural heritage collections: A Sloane Lab case study

Metilli, D., Hughes, A., Vlachidis, A., & Nyhan, J. (2024). Digital Humanities 2024, Arlington, VA, U.S.A.. (2024).

Exploring Cultural Heritage Collections: The Sloane Lab Knowledge Base.

Metilli, D., Vlachidis, A., Pearlman, N., Sadek, J., Valeonti, F., & Nyhan, J. (2024). UCL Festival of Digital Research & Scholarship, London, UK.

Natural language processing for under-resourced languages: Developing a Welsh natural language toolkit

Cunliffe, D., Vlachidis, A., Williams, D., & Tudhope, D. (2022). Computer Speech & Language, 72, 101311.

Named Entity Recognition for early-modern textual sources: A review of capabilities and challenges with strategies for the future

Humbel, M., Nyhan, J., Vlachidis, A., Sloan, K., & Ortolja-Baird, A. (2021). Journal of Documentation.