Digital Humanities & Digital Futures Lab

Where computing meets the literary imagination

I direct the Digital Humanities Research Group and the Digital Futures Lab at the University of Wolverhampton — an experimental, cross-disciplinary space for creative-critical work on digital transformation, AI ethics, and computational methods in the humanities.

Group
Digital Humanities Research Group
Centre
CTTR, University of Wolverhampton

The Digital Humanities Research Group is the home of staff and students who explore how computing and digital technologies offer new ways of understanding textual phenomena in the broadest sense. We investigate how new tools and methodologies open up literary studies to tackle some of the key challenges facing society today — threats to health and wellbeing, the rise of artificial intelligence and its biases, and the unrecognised problem of digital inequality.

We believe in the value of critical-creative dialogue between pioneers of digital technology and the literary arts, humanities and social sciences, to help navigate potential human futures. We are currently accepting applications for MPhil and PhD study, and we welcome expressions of interest from external partners — cultural institutions and businesses alike — for collaborative research.

Visit the Research Group page →
Specialisms

Four areas of focus

Computational Literary Studies

The UK's first CLS Hub

Computational and stylometric analysis of large text corpora, alongside training courses for upskilling humanities staff. Includes the AHRC-funded Novel Perceptions project and Dr Aidan Byrne's Politicians' Fiction database.

Digital Archives

Mining online literary archives

Building large-scale digital libraries, including the British Academy-funded Women's Travel Writing, 1780–1840 database — a resource for the public and researchers alike.

Digitisation

Plugging the gaps

Correcting historical gaps in knowledge — from Dr Daisy Black's research on gendered representations of food in medieval society to digitised diaries recovering overlooked Suffragette activists.

Digital Living

Ethics, inequality & wellbeing

Research into misinformation (C-TRUTH), digital wellbeing (UN/REAL), and using computational methods to help diagnose linguistic and cognitive impairment following acquired brain injury.

Featured Projects

Research in practice

AHRC
£295k

Novel Perceptions: Towards an Inclusive Canon

A major project with BBC Arts, the British Library and Libraries Connected, using computational linguistics and computational sociology to understand unconscious bias in reading culture — built around the BBC's Novels That Shaped Our World.

Anglo-Dutch

C-TRUTH: Mis- & Disinformation

An investigation into citizens' susceptibility to fake news during COVID-19, in direct collaboration with the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and the Dutch RIVM.

Daiwa
£12k

UN/REAL: Digital Living

An Anglo-Japanese research project exploring the blurring of online and offline experience, addressing isolation, addiction, stress and digital fatigue.

Arts Council
£30k

Write in the Head

An online creative writing programme for people with acquired brain injury, using CLS methods to help diagnose linguistic and cognitive impairment — benefiting tens of thousands of survivors.

Arts Council
£20k

The Big Bookshare

A mass book club in UK prisons, engaging over 2,200 prisoners in Kent — with a contribution from Stephen Fry — and feeding directly into prison policy.

Funders
Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) British Academy Arts Council England Daiwa Foundation Wellcome Trust
Project Partners
BBC Arts BBC Digital Planet Libraries Connected CILIP The Reading Agency British Library Haruki Murakami Library, Tokyo The Being Human Festival
Channel
School of Humanities
University of Wolverhampton

Talks, panels & events

CTTR's YouTube channel hosts recordings of public talks, panels and events from the research centre, including sessions from the Digital Futures Lab launch and Computational Literary Studies Training School.

Watch on YouTube →

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