new perspectives enter a new phase

Produced by Times Higher Education for Trinity College Dublin

Arts and Humanitiesenter a new phaseNew perspectives

001_TCD_SEP0910V2.qxp:Layout 1 12/8/10 15:25 Page 3

he newest building on the Trinity College Dublin campus captured theimagination of its residents while it was still on the drawing board. Thoseinvolved with the project admit to being captivated by its potential, by itsability to “throw away the rulebook” and by the buzz it generates that “never

really goes away”.Whether this enthusiasm comes from within Trinity College Dublin itself – which as

a walled campus around which the city of Dublin grew has its own individual dynamic,or whether it comes from a rare focus on disciplines that are often passed over forinvestment opportunities in more technological subjects – it is clear that the Trinity LongRoom Hub is a unique place.

It is attracting interest from all over the campus from disciplines as diverse as physics,genetics and IT, as their experts team up with arts and humanities scholars to collaborateon interdisciplinary work ranging from the study of historical documents such as the Bookof Kells to a project capturing memories from the Republic of Ireland’s older population.

Conceived in 2004 as a research institute for the arts and humanities at Trinity, theHub was formally established as a Trinity Research Institute in 2006 and one year latersecured €10.8 million (£9.2 million) in funding from the Irish government as part of theHumanities Serving Irish Society consortium bid to the Higher Education Authority’sProgramme for Research in Third-Level Institutions. The Hub combines the strengthsof a great research library facility, such as The Huntington in California, and an institutefor advanced studies, such as Harvard University’s Radcliffe.

But describing exactly what the Hub is, however, is difficult, as it is more than a building:it is a node and an incubator; it is where ideas intersect. Poul Holm, academic directorof the Trinity Long Room Hub, describes it best: “It’s not an ivory tower, but a powerhouse.”Describing what it does is easier: it promotes outreach and access to the general public,to policymakers and to schools while interacting with the creative and IT industries, theworld of cultural heritage and the media.

As Holm says: “We’re definitely not building the Hub to ringfence the humanities,but to open up and to be sure that we are developing a platform or springboard for humanitiesresearch, both to engage with other academic disciplines and to engage with society todeliver on some of the major societal challenges.”

The Trinity Long Room Hub encompasses activities from within seven academicschools – Drama, Film and Music; English; Histories and Humanities; Languages,Literatures and Cultural Studies; Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences;Religions, Theology and Ecumenics; and Social Sciences and Philosophy – as well asthe Library. Alongside these sit world-class facilities including offices for nine visitingresearchers, an open reading room with carrel-style workspaces for 45 postdoctoral andpostgraduate researchers, a lecture theatre, a seminar room, an ideas space and aDigitisation Unit suite.

Before it officially opens its doors, the Hub is already pulling in funding. The Irishgovernment recently granted the Digital Arts and Humanities Consortium, which the Hubis leading, nearly €7 million in funding. Of this, €3 million will go to the Digital Artsand Humanities Structured PhD programme at Trinity, with the money supportingstudentships, academic positions and administrative and technical support staff.

According to Holm, “This will potentially have a huge impact on European thinkingabout the arts and humanities as a job creator and as potentially providing totally newways of doing research in the arts and humanities.”

The buzz around the arts and humanities in Trinity looks set to spread further afield.

T

9 September 2010 Times Higher Education 3

ou could be forgiven for thinking that innovation is the domain of science,engineering and technology. But you would be wrong. Building on almost 420years of scholarly tradition, Trinity College Dublin is advancing a new phaseof evolution in research for the arts and humanities. With the completion of

the Trinity Long Room Hub, a dedicated institute for advanced studies in the arts andhumanities, Trinity is positioning high technology alongside high thinking. The juxtapositionof this research facility with the college’s 280-year-old library is deliberate. Linking theold with the new, Trinity is drawing on the past to inform the future, creating newscholarship and consolidating existing fields of enquiry through the innovative use of digitaltechnologies. As the world grapples with recession, Trinity’s Long Room Hub is a beacon,harking back to the ancient role of the university in society, to focus minds and toilluminate through questioning the human condition. The groundbreaking work beingundertaken there points to a future in which arts and humanities research can be as rewardingto a nation’s bottom line as it is to the pursuit of knowledge.

In a time of financial restraint, the Irish government has invested €10.8 million in thearts and humanities via funding for the Trinity Long Room Hub. The innovative work goingon there has begun to change people’s views of the impact that the arts and humanitiescan have on business. Pioneering projects are shaping a “smarter planet”. Although theword “computer” preceded the collection of the 1641 Depositions by almost 30 years,only in this century are the two coming together. Using witness statements made after anIrish rebellion some three and a half centuries ago to teach today’s IBM computers howto understand language is just one way the arts and humanities are helping a multinationalcorporation to innovate. IBM says it is the different insights that come from the humanitiesthat it particularly values.

But is investment and research in the arts and humanities truly sustainable? The evolutionof digital humanities offers hope that research in these disciplines will flourish, despitethe disparity in funding with science. But institutions must move quickly to embrace thischange and foster relationships with industry. The groundbreaking work being undertakenat the Trinity Long Room Hub points to a future in which arts and humanities researchcan be as rewarding to a nation’s bottom line as it is to the pursuit of knowledge.

Contents4

The porous university Ireland’s oldest university facilitates

collaboration between scholars and business

8Force field

The new Trinity Long Room Hub building is launched

10Back to the future

A digitally driven setting for arts researchshows yesterday’s importance to tomorrow

12Home and away

Strengthening links with the city of Dublinand the global community of scholars

14Creative network

Making arts and humanities researchsustainable

Editor of Times Higher Education: Ann Mroz Supplement Editor: Fiona SalvageProduced by TSL Education Limited to a brief agreed with Trinity College Dublin. Paid for by the Trinity Long Room Hub through private funding. All editorial contentcommissioned by TSL Education Limited.For feedback or to suggest ideas for supplements, contact [email protected] sponsorship or advertising opportunities, contact [email protected] view this supplement as a digital edition, go to www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/tcd

Y

2 Times Higher Education 9 September 2010

002-003_TCD_SEP0910.qxp:Layout 1 12/8/10 15:27


or many years, Ireland’s oldestthird-level institution has beenfinding novel and dynamic waysto engage with the world, but the

latest example is its most significant to date. TheTrinity Long Room Hub, the university’s newarts and humanities research institute, repre-sents a promising synergy between arts andhumanities and several globally significant in-dustrial partners that, at first glance, looksimprobable. In development for the past sevenyears, it was grant-aided €10.8 million (£8.87 mil-lion) by the Irish government, enabling TrinityCollege to erect a new building to house theproject.

The impetus to create the Trinity Long RoomHub (which got its name from the famous LongRoom housed within the university’s old library)came from the realisation that research in artsand humanities is “far too fragmented”, saysJane Ohlmeyer, Erasmus Smith’s professor ofmodern history at Trinity College, and one of theTrinity Long Room Hub’s founders.

Trinity College has a well-established aca-demic reputation and outstanding libraryresources (see box, page 7). “However, we realisedwe were not making as much as we could ofthese phenomenal assets,” Ohlmeyer says.

It used to be the case that only faculties suchas pharmacy, science and engineering would linkup with major multinationals on groundbreakingresearch collaborations, or have any real impacton the economy in terms of providing new jobs.

The porousuniversity

But that is changing. Now Ireland’s rich diversi-ty of government-supported research anddevelopment projects is being carried out by manyof the world’s leading corporations with a sig-nificant presence in Ireland, in partnership witharts and humanities disciplines at Trinity College.

The objective of the Trinity Long Room Hubis to bring together an eclectic group of disci-plines to work on new and exciting projects. Oneof those projects, the 1641 Depositions, is a pioneering partnership with IBM, the univer-sities of Aberdeen and Cambridge, the Artsand Humanities Research Council, the IrishResearch Council for the Humanities and

based on history? Marie Wallace, senior researchand development manager at IBM Language-Ware, explains that the complex, unstructured andvery challenging data contained in the project willhelp IBM to teach computers how to understandnatural language. IBM LanguageWare, innova-tive new software that the company is currentlydeveloping, will be able to summarise, correlateand analyse vast quantities of information.

The critical-analysis skills for which aca-demics in the arts and humanities are well knownwill be available with IBM’s new, highly focusedsoftware. It will be relevant to a broad range ofpeople carrying out research, who will be ableto “ask” the software questions about a specificbody of knowledge, and it will extrapolate con-clusions and provide all the necessary answers.

It will remove the need to read endless pagesof documents – and it will all be available on theinternet. The project is part of IBM’s vision of a“smarter planet”, and its objective to develop soft-ware that will be of value to millions in theireveryday lives.

Wallace says working with the humanities isexciting for IBM because “we get a completelydifferent perspective and insights that we can apply in different areas to create entirely newproducts. We can make parallels and apply whatwe learn from the 1641 project to areas as diverseas law enforcement and financial services.”

Yet another groundbreaking Trinity LongRoom Hub project is happening in partnershipwith Microsoft, and it involves creating a

Ireland’s oldest university unveils aninnovative way to unite scholarship andbusiness. Eddie Lennon reports

‘Working with Trinity CollegeDublin’s arts and humanitiesis exciting for IBM – we get acompletely differentperspective’

Social Sciences and Trinity College Library. A major rebellion erupted in Ireland in 1641

that resulted in a considerable loss of life. Manypeople were murdered by the insurgents and inreprisal killings by government forces. Otherswere expelled from their homes in the middle ofwinter and died from cold or disease. The Irish gov-ernment of the time took several thousand witnessstatements from mainly Protestant settlers abouttheir experiences of the rebellion. These state-ments, which are kept in Trinity College Dublin’slibrary, run to 19,000 pages but are difficult to read.

So why is IBM getting involved in a projectThe past speaks a groundbreaking partnership with IBM employs written records of a 17th-century rebellion to aid in software development

F


1641

DEP

OSIT

IONS

COU

RTES

Y OF

THE

BOAR

D OF

TRIN

ITY

COLL

EGE

DUBL

IN

Ohlmeyer ‘research is far too fragmented’

004-007_TCD_SEP0910.qxp:Layout 1 12/8/10 15:29 Page 4


virtual research environment for humanitiesscholars.

“We have all these electronic resources onthe web: some commercial, some freely avail-able. But they’re digital ghettos – they don’ttalk to each other very well. With a lot of thesearching that goes on, only a small amount ofmaterial is being searched,” Ohlmeyer says.

“What we’re doing with Microsoft is creat-ing a network where all these digital ghettos worktogether. We’re collecting manuscript sources andother primary and textual visual documenta-tion into a virtual room, along with all the relevantpublished material available on the web. The aimis to bring information together in a seamless, interoperable way.”

This innovative project in the world of artsand humanities is likely to be of major interestto historians, genealogists, academics and stu-dents. Like IBM’s 1641 initiative, it will makelife a lot easier for those who use it, and will savea lot of time, Ohlmeyer says.

Extending this research technology wouldbe of obvious commercial value to Microsoft. Uni-versities everywhere that teach humanities would

conceivably be interested in subscribing to it, aswould public libraries. And, Ohlmeyer adds:“Once it is developed it should be very easy tocustomise for specific purposes.”

Although the service could be subscriptionbased, it is expected to be available free of chargeto researchers in local and national libraries.


of the School of Drama, Film and Music. He hasbeen involved with the Trinity Long Room Hubin the development of a proposed new doctoratein digital arts and humanities, for which a con-sortium of Irish universities has recently securedsubstantial funding from the Irish government aspart of Ireland’s smart economy.

Along with Microsoft and IBM, Google and In-tel have signed on as industrial partners to thenew PhD programme.

These four companies will work in tandem withTrinity College’s PhD students on new and cut-ting-edge research projects. These will rangefrom human-computer interfaces (similar to thetechnology used in the Wii game console) to newforms of interactive performance, ranging fromcinema to live events.

Dublin is clearly a city rich in the arts and hu-manities. From its various theatres and livelymusic scene to the Oscar Wilde Centre for Writ-ing, it offers a wealth of information and learningfor all practitioners. But this knowledge was not,until recently, being shared as well as it couldbe. A recent report by Trinity College academicJohanna Archbold, Creativity, the City and the

Terry Neill is a governor of

London Business School and

co-chair of the external

advisory board of the Trinity

Long Room Hub. “Within the

arts and humanities,” he says,

“there’s an extraordinary body

of knowledge about human

beings – how they behave,

how they learn, what

motivates or de-motivates

them, their values, and what

you can learn from their

history – but most of the time

only a tiny fraction of it is

applied in business,

government and society. It is

somehow trapped in the halls

of academia. There is an

extraordinary challenge – and

opportunity – to engage and

bring that knowledge and

insight to the wider world.”

One person doing just that

is Maurice Biriotti, who was

recently appointed adjunct

professor of humanities innovation

at Trinity College Dublin. Biriotti’s

new role with the Trinity Long

Room Hub will be to forge

relationships between the arts,

humanities and business, and

to find new ideas and innovations

for Trinity College. He will also

be responsible for identifying

and creating new research

projects and spin-offs. “The

best companies deserve the

best thinking,” he says.

Biriotti’s background is as a

lecturer in the humanities, mainly

in literature. He left the academy

with a determination to harness

the wisdom and insights he found

in the arts and humanities to help

solve contemporary problems. He

is chief executive of the agency

SHM, which assists companies to

answer awkward questions and

solve thorny problems during

times of crisis and change.

Its work is wide-ranging, from

helping companies to transform

their finance functions to aiding

government organisations to

create the right set of values to

live by. In recent years, Biriotti has

employed philosophers, historians

and literary critics in various

universities across Europe to help

shed light on a variety of business

problems.

He says: “The arts and

philosophy helped Biriotti to

advise companies how to

manage relationships between

several cultures in circumstances

where work had been

outsourced to companies

abroad.

He explains: “Some of

Aristotle’s insights helped us

reconceptualise these

relationships. When we examined

them through the lens of

Aristotle, we found that a lot of

outsourcing relationships begin

with people being attracted to

each other because they’re

different (quicker at doing a

particular function, for example).

But the minute the ink is dry on a

Aristotle’s lessons for outsourcing and Zola’s tips for corporate networking

‘With Microsoft we’recreating a network to helpdigital ghettos work together,to bring data together in aseamless way’

contract, it seems that the very

thing that attracted people to their

partner often becomes the thing

that repels them.

An obscure novel called Au

Bonheur des Dames, by the French

writer Émile Zola, was the rather

unlikely basis for figuring out what

exactly was going on. Zola’s novel

features a portrayal of the early

days of department stores. It

illustrates how gossip among staff,

far from being a mere distraction

from work, is what makes a

department store run smoothly.

Biriotti says: “We realised the

experts weren’t communicating

because, given the way their lives

and professions were set up, they

humanities touch on all the

biggest things that affect us in life:

why we do what we do, what we

believe in, what the right and

wrong thing to do is. What keeps

people who work in business,

politics and policymaking up at

night has nothing to do with

spreadsheets, numbers or

technical stuff. We in humanities

are sitting on this amazing

treasure trove – operas and plays,

sonnets and poetry, philosophy

and history. It is the humanities’

best effort at working through

what could be the best way to

think about a whole variety of big

questions.”

Strange as it may sound, Greek

were devoid of any proper

human contact. When we

introduced human contact into

the intranet – simply by asking

people to create chat rooms, and

the kind of social networking we

would see years later on the

likes of Facebook – usage rates,

and communication generally,

went through the roof.”

Meanwhile, Neill believes

the arts and humanities contain

a rich vein of knowledge that is

not merely useful in its

applicability to the business

world. That applicability, he

predicts, may also yet bring a

much-needed boost to Ireland’s

economy.

University, was published as part of the TrinityWeek 2010 festival. In the document, Archboldhighlights eight cultural institutions – the ma-jority of which are based within a square kilometrein the city centre in a “cultural cluster” – offer-ing new and exciting opportunities for synergieswith each other, with many significant opportu-nities for collaboration that have yet to beexplored.

Between them, the institutions hold pricelesscollections consisting of millions of manuscripts,artefacts and paintings, treasures of historical rel-evance to Ireland and abroad, and each hostspublic programmes encouraging interaction withthese treasures.

At the launch of the report, Trinity Collegeprovost John Hegarty said: “The rationale forthe Creativity, the City and the University reportwas that Trinity College together with Dublin’smajor cultural institutions could combine theirefforts further and enable progress to the fore-front of creativity and innovation in the culturalsector. The challenge now is to exploit even morethe connections and to learn from internationalexperience in this regard.”

Trinity College Dublin’s arts

and humanities faculty boasts

some world-famous alumni.

Some of the most well known

include playwrights Samuel

Beckett and Oscar Wilde; Bram

Stoker, author of Dracula;

Jonathan Swift, author of

Gulliver’s Travels; and

philosophers George Berkeley

and Edmund Burke.

The university has a strong

academic reputation and

outstanding library resources,

including volumes dating back to

1592, when the university was

founded. Its legal deposit

library receives a copy of every

book published in the UK and

Ireland every year.

Trinity College’s position as a

world leader in arts and

humanities research and

thinking is well established.

It was ranked 41st in the

world for arts and humanities in

the Times Higher Education

World University Rankings 2009,

and is 12th in Europe – which

sees it placed higher than any

other Irish higher education

institution.

“Microsoft Research collaborates with theworld’s foremost researchers in academia, acrossindustries and governments, to advance researchand fuel innovation. Our collaboration with the Trinity Long Room Hub is just one of the manyways we are integrating with leading academicinstitutions worldwide to further innovation,”Alex Wade, director for scholarly communication,Microsoft External Research, says.

Matthew Causey is senior lecturer in dramaat Trinity College Dublin. He is also director ofthe Arts Technology Research Lab, which is part

Neill ‘knowledge trapped in

the halls of academia’


9 September 2010 Times Higher Education 98 Times Higher Education 9 September 2010

Force fieldThe Trinity Long Room Hub will galvanise new energyin humanities scholarship. Fiona Salvage reports

he speed at which the Trinity LongRoom Hub building has beenerected reflects the energy asso-ciated with the whole project.

Constructed in less than a year, the new building is a visual embodiment of many yearsof dynamic work in the arts and humanities atTrinity College Dublin.

Poul Holm, academic director of the TrinityLong Room Hub, says: “I think it will be a sig-nature building, not just for Trinity but also forthe arts and humanities. The building certainlyprovides the focus within Trinity; it is in a veryprominent position on the campus. We have anoutstanding opportunity to open our doors – notonly to be a hub for Trinity researchers, but alsoto build a network of people in culture, in liter-ary and artistic life in Dublin and beyond, andprovide a nexus for energising the field.”

The excitement surrounding the Hub is aboutmore than just the physical building; it is alsoabout the activities that will take place withinit, and the people who will meet there to col-laborate, research, innovate, discuss and promotethe arts and humanities to a wider world.

One of the most distinctive parts of the Hubis the library, says librarian and college archivistRobin Adams, because “there is a recognitionthat the library is an active partner in the re-search process, particularly as we’re movingmore into digital and electronic environments.

“We – librarians, archivists – can bring moreto the process because once we change the for-mat of the material there are issues of how it is described, the whole concept of metadatacreation, how you access material and how youremodel it.”

One of the attractions for researchers will

be access to the growing number of Trinity Col-lege treasures being digitised. Overseen by TimKeefe, head of digital resources and imagingservices, digitised versions of an expanding cat-alogue of the institution’s priceless artefacts areavailable online, which is driving up numbers ofvisiting researchers keen to study the real thing.

Holm believes researchers in the arts andhumanities have lacked a supportive infra-structure to help them work with industry asextensively and successfully as their colleaguesin science and medical fields. One of the Hub’sroles will be to act as an incubator: to foster net-works, leadership and entrepreneurship andsupport researchers to identify the partners theyneed to take their research further and wider.

This advocacy role is vital, because “very fewpeople speak up for the arts and humanities”,Holm says, especially at the high-powered tables where far-reaching decisions are made, andwhere too often the arts and humanities are treat-ed as the “ethical appendix”.

Work being undertaken at Trinity College inmedical humanities, environmental humanitiesand in new fields such as arts technology, demon-strate the diverse and non-traditional areas thehumanities are beginning to move into and shouldbe consulted in, Holm says.

“The arts and humanities are a key to successin the global marketplace. Conventional wisdomis that technology and scientific discoveries arethe main drivers of modern societies. Thoseworking in the arts and humanities see things dif-ferently – we as humans are driven not by whatwe eat but what we want to eat. The thought, theintention is primary to human action. The artsand humanities deal with the most driving forceof all: motivation.”

T

Keefe digitisation is key

Holm ‘the building provides the focus within Trinity’



Back tothe futureA cutting-edge, digitally driven setting for arts andhumanities research shows the importance ofyesterday to tomorrow, writes Maeve O’Lynn

t is widely acknowledged that thearts and humanities do not tend toproduce the same sort of quantifi-able results as medical,

engineering or economic research, for example.Instead, research and study in the field of artsand humanities is often focused on centuriespast, whether the subject in question is litera-ture, paintings, languages, sources, historicalevents, documents or archives. But the questionremains as to whether this focus on the past canhave relevance for the present and whether it is, in fact, a necessity in order to prepare for thefuture.

H. G. Wells said: “History is a race betweeneducation and catastrophe.” However, in thecase of the arts and humanities disciplines, this is a race that catastrophe threatens to win, as government education policy continuesto value science and business, while treatingthe traditionally revered arts and humanitiesdisciplines as less relevant and meaningful to today’s student and in today’s society.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this derogatory viewis treated dismissively in Trinity College Dublin’sdedicated arts and humanities research institute,the Trinity Long Room Hub.

Roy Foster, Carroll professor of Irish his toryat Hertford College, Oxford, believes that con-trary to the idea that the arts and humanities arebecoming less relevant, “the proposal for a top-flight institute for advanced study in thehumanities seemed long overdue for Ireland”.

accepted knowledge, such as the use of woadinstead of lapis lazuli as a blue dye in themanuscript.

Frank Boland is a professor of engineeringscience at Trinity College, but he is involved inthe arts and humanities faculty through aninterdisciplinary project funded by the TrinityLong Room Hub, entitled The Book: DiscoveringSounds Initiative.

“Education and learning in all disciplineshave never been more relevant to the wellbeingof society,” Boland says.

In 2004, the university’s English facultydigitised pages from the Trinity Collegemanuscripts of Piers Plowman to demonstratewhat the medieval book can tell us about a text,the authorship of the text, the scribe and thepeople who had access to the document duringits existence. The Discovering Sounds Initiativeaims to build on that project to include voicesynchronisation, offering interpretation, translationand transcription.

Catherine Kane, from the Centre for LearningTechnology at Trinity College, is also involved inthe project, which she believes “will enrich theusers’ experience, engagement and understandingof precious manuscripts and resources in thelibrary”.

“Educational establishments such as Trinity

Foster has been an external advisory memberof the Trinity Long Room Hub since the project’sinception.

“This is a vital development for the highereducation sector in Ireland because it comes ata time when the technology of knowledge storage,dissemination and retrieval has been revolu-tionised by digitalisation and electroniccommunications circuits,” he says.

His thoughts on the building that will housethe Trinity Long Room Hub are similarly posi-tive: “A newly built state-of-the-art researchcentre will be able to benefit directly from

‘The Trinity Long Room Huboffers opportunities forinterdisciplinary collaboration,but still preserves a place fortraditional research methods’

College Dublin have vast collections of preciousresources that can be difficult to make availableto students, from our slide collections on history of art and Classics to precious documentsin our library collections,” Kane says. “Using anICT-centred approach makes access to theseresources possible without damage to theoriginals.”

The Trinity Long Room Hub is also home tothe interdisciplinary Atlas of Language Politicsin Modern Central Europe project, headed byTomasz Kamusella, the Thomas Brown lecturerin Slavonic Studies in the School of Languages,Literature and Cultural Studies. The Atlas offersan insight into the mechanisms and history of howlanguages have been made, unmade and deployedfor political ends in the age of nationalism, fromthe 19th to the 21st century.

The arts and humanities are not always thoughtof in political terms, but this project shows justhow important the discipline is in being able to

offer crucial insight into religious conflictsthroughout history and around the world –knowledge that is of overwhelming relevance intoday’s divided societies.

Kamusella’s project is based, he says, on thepremise that “peoples and states have frequentlyquarrelled, gone to war, and even committedgenocides over language as a symbol of groupidentity and group difference. But this has beenso to a highly unusual extent in modern CentralEurope, where the politicised equation of languagewith nation and state became the sole legitimisingbasis of state-building in the region after the FirstWorld War.”

Kamusella attributes his success in gettingthis project off the ground to the willingness ofthe Trinity Long Room Hub to be more flexiblein its funding than other institutions.

“Novel research, involving unprecedentedconfigurations of scholars, subject matter andexternal parties in the context of the fast-changingrealities of the EU and the globalising world,requires novel approaches to funding,” he says.

As well as offering new opportunities foracademics, these new developments in the wayarts and humanities subjects are researched,taught and made accessible hold a huge appealfor students.

“Arts and humanities need to be seen asinnovative and forward thinking and also need toaddress issues of access and accessibility,” Kanesays. “Today’s students have grown up in a verymobile, technical world. They are comfortable withtechnology and its integration into all aspects oftheir lives. This includes education.”

However, Boland urges caution to those keento see the back of traditional forms of academicresearch and teaching. “There are difficultchallenges regarding ensuring the credibility ofsources and material,” he says. “The ease andperfection of alterations to images and thepropagation of inaccuracies through generationsof electronic documents are two such challenges,for example.”

As one might expect of members of thescholarly community at Ireland’s oldest university,those at the Trinity Long Room Hub are unlikely to forget the importance of preserving

historical materials and methods. The institute offers unique opportunities for

interdisciplinary collaboration and internationalacademic cooperation and debate in key areas,but still preserves a place for traditional researchand teaching methods.

“Digital archives can never replace thecommunications circuit that is set up by peopleinteracting face to face, and mind to mind, in astimulating environment,” Foster says.

With that interaction in mind, the TrinityLong Room Hub has already hosted a numberof visiting scholars and a range of internationalprojects are in the pipeline.

One final area in which the arts andhumanities may consider looking to the pastwhile remaining at the cutting edge of modernacademic research is that of interdisciplinarycollaboration. The rigid concept of individualfaculty disciplines is a very modern approach,which bears little relation to the tradition of thepolymath – the Renaissance ideal of a well-rounded education.

As Boland observes: “Collaboration inresearch between the arts and humanities andengineering is a very useful way to encouragemutual understanding of the potential of newtechnology and creativity in envisaging newapplications.

“These ideas are making a return to theacademy, through the avenues ofmultidisciplinary conferences and journals. Butinitiatives such as the Trinity Long Room Hubmay be the most effective way to integrate thedisciplines, in terms of academic research as wellas education,” he adds.

“The interdisciplinary approach of the Hubis certainly one of the factors that is alreadyattracting substantial interest from theinternational scholarly community,” Foster says,“but it has also given Trinity the means tocontribute to Ireland’s academic standing bycreating the sort of intersections that have longbeen a feature of communities such as theInstitute for Advanced Study in Princeton, theWoodrow Wilson International Center for Scholarsin Washington and the European UniversityInstitute in Florence.”

this, and incorporate it in the most up-to-date way.”

The Trinity Long Room Hub incorporates suchdevelopments impressively, seamlessly using newtechnology to promote the rich, historical archivecollection owned by Trinity College, an institutionfounded in the 16th century. The collegeshowcases these developments in a plethora ofonline exhibitions and large-scale projects, whichcombine a thoroughly modern approach with theculture and heritage of centuries past.

Projects such as the multidisciplinary initiativebetween the conservation and physics departmentson the Book of Kells overturned previously

I



Home and awayOlga Wojtas on Trinity College’s cultural outreach work in Dublin, globallyrelevant postgraduate programmes and historic links with South Asia

rinity College Dublin has had adynamic relationship with its localcommunity for over 400 years. Itwas a concerted campaign by the

local community, spearheaded by the DublinCorporation, that led to the university beingfounded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592. Thefirst lectures in the Irish language were deliveredin 1628, and while it may have once been seenas a university of the Protestant ascendancy,Trinity has been admitting Catholics since 1793.More recently, the institution’s tradition ofengagement with the local community has beenfurther enhanced through a multidisciplinaryproject, Creative Arts, Technology and Culture.

This innovative project is putting TrinityCollege at the heart of Dublin’s cultural outreach.There is an urgent need for research into the wayshigher education can contribute to theincreasingly sought-after “creative city” status,and the project’s first study is an investigation

downturn, but research fellow Johanna Archboldsays that cultural collaboration will make soundeconomic sense. Resources and expertise can bepooled and duplication avoided.

Trinity College is already the city’s third-biggest tourist attraction, after the GuinnessStorehouse and Dublin Zoo, Holm says. “There’san immediate sense of opening a gateway to aworld of love for learning.”

Visitors tend to focus principally on the Bookof Kells (a highly illustrated biblical manuscriptproduced by Celtic monks in around AD800), butTrinity College is now set to highlight a muchbroader range of its treasures and its research,for example through digital displays.

Expectations for the external impact of the Hubare on the same scale as for the science galleryat the other end of the Trinity campus. Unlike theHub, the science gallery is purpose-built forpublic access, and it hosts exhibitions and specialevents throughout the year where the public caninteract with and understand science throughthe arts.

Hegarty believes the Trinity Long Room Hubcan become, like the science gallery, “a place inthe consciousness of the country, on the trail asa place to visit, and a place that has a spark andis new and edgy”. He expects the Hub “to be anerve centre for helping to organise events acrossthe arts and humanities that would not be possible

of the existing links between Trinity College andnearby museums, libraries and galleries to seehow these can be exploited further.

Spearheaded by Trinity’s provost, JohnHegarty, the project reconnects the city’s manycultural activities – museums, theatre, music,literature and language – by rethinking not onlyhow they operate and their role in the 21stcentury, but also how they interact with theuniversity.

Russian-born Anastasia Dukova

is in the third year of a PhD

investigating crime and policing

in Dublin, Brisbane and London

in the second half of the 19th

century. She believes that the

comparative research has given

her enormous opportunities,

both personal and academic.

She has made research trips to

Australia, and has links with

the Australian Research Council

Centre of Excellence in Policing

and Security at Griffith

University in Brisbane.

“I think universities should

encourage their research students

to participate in an international

academic exchange,” she says.

“I’m considering a

postdoctorate degree in

criminology. My research requires

knowledge of the legal and

punitive systems of Ireland,

England and the colony of

Queensland. I hope this diverse

approach to criminal history and

criminology will make my

knowledge and skills equally

effective in Europe and in

Australia.”

Her PhD is funded through the

Irish Research Council for the

Humanities and Social Sciences,

set up in 2000 to boost Ireland’s

research capacity. She says she

was attracted by the prominence

of humanities and social sciences

at Trinity College, and has been

impressed by the quality of its

collections and its academic

supervision.

The university’s links with South

Asia go back almost 250 years,

with the establishment of a

chair of oriental languages in

1762. Trinity College had a major

impact on the development of

India in the 19th century, not

only via its graduates in

disciplines such as engineering,

law and medicine, but also

thanks to 150 graduates from its

Indian Civil Service

School. Early in the 20th

century, Sir George

Grierson, who studied

mathematics and Sanskrit

at Trinity College,

produced his massive

Linguistic Survey of India.

Those links are now being

given fresh impetus through the

university’s South Asia Initiative,

bringing together 70 academics

from across the institution, who

until now have been teaching and

researching on South Asia in

relative isolation. The initiative is

chaired by Jürgen Barkhoff, Trinity

College’s registrar (an academic

position).

“With Ireland becoming such a

multicultural society in the past 10

years, we wanted to use this

initiative not only to strengthen

teaching and research, but also to

strengthen awareness of these

cultures in Ireland,” he says.

Strong support has come from

the local Indian community, with

more than 20 organisations

coming together to fund a new

lectureship in Indian history and

culture.

The Indian Council for Cultural

Relations is also helping to

establish visiting professorships.

“These posts will form the

nucleus of a Centre for Indian

Studies,” Barkhoff says.

The South Asia Initiative has

already hosted lectures by

TIn a major development for the college, Trinity

is now collaborating with the creative industriesto deliver courses for actors, directors and lightingdesigners, curators and conservationists as wellas other practitioners. This work is critical inrepositioning the university – which is a keyobjective of the Hub project – by creating a two-way flow of information in and out of theuniversity, and creating connections acrossdisciplines.

Hegarty explains: “It is like having a porousuniversity where the boundaries are not so clear-cut any more, and where ideas and people canmove easily across those blurred boundaries.”

Poul Holm, academic director of the TrinityLong Room Hub, says: “What we are trying todo is develop a new platform for the newhumanities. The IT revolution will let us unlockour treasures.”

Funding for the Trinity Long Room Hub projectwas earmarked before the worldwide economic

Amartya Sen, the economist

and Nobel laureate, and Abdul

Kalam, the former president

of India.

The university is showcasing

the centuries-old links between

Trinity College, Europe and India in

a major exhibition, Nabobs,

Soldiers and Imperial Service: The

Irish in India, drawing on a

material from the 19th and early

20th century held in its library.

• The exhibition runs until 3

October 2010. For more

information, visit www.tcd.ie/

Library/about/exhibitions

Forward-looking Holm keen to unlock riches

before”, hosting talks, exhibitions, events andbeing recognised for its activity in its own right.

Collaboration with neighbouring institutionscould also be a draw for students, allowingopportunities for joint postgraduate courses andinternships.

“This would be particularly interesting tointernational students, providing employmentfor postgraduates and an area of potential incomegeneration,” Archbold says.

Trinity College has already launched Texts,Contexts, Cultures, a revolutionary postgraduateprogramme that is leading the transformation ofthe European PhD, according to CrawfordGribben, Trinity Long Room Hub senior lecturerin early modern print culture.

The programme was developed jointly byTrinity College, University College Cork and theNational University of Ireland Galway, and isdesigned to integrate new technologies andprofessional placements into the traditional PhD.

There are currently some 40 students on theprogramme, 15 of them at Trinity College. Theydevelop their research under the guidance of asupervisory panel that is often interdisciplinaryand multi-institutional, including academicsfrom leading institutions in North America andEurope. Students have the opportunity to take aplacement linked to the knowledge economy,backed by training and seminars in career and

aptitude development. Giving students thesenew skills will increase their employability,Trinity College scholars believe.

Gribben says: “We receive applications fromall over the world, from students with bachelor’sand master’s degrees, from recent graduatesand others with significant work experienceand professional successes.”

Kayoko Yukimura, who took herundergraduate and master’s degrees at KobeUniversity in Japan, is in the first year of adoctorate funded through Rotary International’sAmbassadorial Scholarship scheme.

She is investigating the maritimecommunities of southern Ireland after theJacobite War, and is keeping in close touchwith postgraduates and professors in Japan.

“There are many researchers of Europeanhistory in my country,” she says. “They areinterested in the way historians in Ireland andother European countries study history. I reportthe latest trends of historiography in theRepublic of Ireland and Europe to them.”

She has been struck by the wealth ofresources in the Trinity College library, notablythe digital databases that are invaluable tohistory researchers.

“Trinity College’s active interaction withother academic institutions, both domestic andinternational, is impressive,” she says.



Creativenetwork

ith the global economy in turmoil,government funding for researchprojects has become increasinglyscarce worldwide. This has been

particularly marked in the arts and humanities,an issue that David Lloyd, dean of research atTrinity College Dublin, is keen to highlight.

“In recent years, the distribution of nationalresearch funding has probably been 80 per centfor sciences, 12 per cent for social sciences andonly 8 per cent for the arts,” Lloyd says.

“There is thus a tenfold difference betweenwhat the sciences get and what the arts andhumanities get and that can’t be sustained.There needs to be a balancing out if we’re goingto place an importance on culture in society. Thecurrent situation is a bit of a travesty.”

Lloyd has a biochemistry background, whileTrinity College’s provost, John Hegarty, is aphysicist and Patrick Prendergast, the vice-provost, is a specialist in biomechanicsengineering. Yet all three are agreed on theimportance of the arts and humanities, both inacademe and in society generally.

“No matter what our academic backgroundsare, we’re all immersed in the arts andhumanities in our cultural lives and we all havean appreciation of it,” Prendergast says. “I don’tbelieve in C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ concept. Tome, this is a simplistic understanding of humanendeavour and academic research.”

The question is how to translate this beliefthat all academic disciplines are not only equally

after extensive digital repair work. The films,made between 1910 and 1913, are importantparts of Ireland’s cultural heritage, Kokaramsays. Although some of the films were made intoDVDs a decade ago, they have not been widelyseen since the 1920s, he estimates. “There is aninteresting connection between the preservationof cultural heritage and hardcore mathematics.”

The Trinity Long Room Hub’s approach isinnovative, but contemporary research culture atTrinity College has been influenced byinternational academic developments as well.Prendergast recalls: “I was particularly impressedby the way the PhD is done in the Netherlands.Graduate study often involves students puttingtogether a curriculum of courses in universitiesaround the country and they study and researchin a very collaborative and interactive way. Asthe island of Ireland is relatively small, this issomething I would like to see us doing here. Iwould like students to be able to take advantageof the specialist skills and expertise of membersof the faculty in universities around the country.”

It is hoped that the Trinity Long Room Hubdevelopment will facilitate knowledge transferthrough the digitisation of archives, as well as inthe creation of new platforms for education in

important, but interconnected, into modern andviable research models. This is a challenge thatTrinity College hopes the Trinity Long RoomHub will go some way towards addressing.

An evolution in arts and humanities research,which enables a traditional discipline to remainrelevant and contemporary, is to be welcomed.How it is to be funded, though, is another matter.

“The arts and humanities need to find a newway of operating and becoming self-sustaining, sowe must diversify. The government needs to startseeing investing in the arts and humanities as aninvestment in the country’s future, but we’re alsolooking to philanthropy,” Hegarty says.

Partnerships with cultural institutions, includingmuseums, galleries and libraries, afford arts andhumanities researchers greater opportunities forengagement with the public, opportunities that

‘We want the Trinity LongRoom Hub to become abeacon for collaboration, and for industry to look to it for problem solving’

the academic community and industry.” Prendergast says his aim is for “the Trinity

Long Room Hub to become a beacon for this kindof collaboration. I want industry to think of theTrinity Long Room Hub straight away as a placeto find arts and humanities researchers to workwith on developing projects and problem solving.”

Anil Kokaram’s research work on restoringdamaged film has developed into an importantinnovation for the multibillion-dollar film industryand is a stellar example of what suchcollaborations can achieve. An associate professorin Trinity College’s department of electronic andelectrical engineering, Kokaram’s digital filmrestoration methods were used to create specialeffects on films such as The Matrix Reloaded,King Kong and Casino Royale, and earned him andhis collaborators an Academy Award in 2007.

His early consultancy work with The Foundry,an external media company, is now a long-termrelationship and has evolved into collaborativestereo post-production work for the newgeneration of 3D films such as Avatar.

At the same time, his team’s restoration workcontinues. A project with film historian andprofessor of drama at Trinity College KevinRockett will see the release this month of six films

Wvirtual learning environments. These strategieswill work in tandem with the creation of a cutting-edge Innovation Academy for PhD researchers.

The Trinity College Dublin-University CollegeDublin Innovation Academy will coordinategeneric and discipline-specific training for someGraduate Research Education Programmes, andhas been established as a component of the TCD-UCD Innovation Alliance.

According to Hegarty: “When studentscomplete a PhD they will have gone very deepinto their particular topic, but the InnovationAcademy will ensure that they have acquired asense of the wider world and of what they can dowith their skills and new knowledge.”

The Innovation Academy will encourageinterdisciplinary collaboration from an earlystage in a student’s research career. Lloyd notes:“In the Innovation Academy we are bringingtogether people from different disciplines andputting them all into the mix to solve a series ofproblems that can’t be addressed by an individualbut could be addressed by an interdisciplinaryteam. The Innovation Academy will imbueproblem solving with creativity.”

The Dutch model that impressed Prendergastis also in evidence in future plans for the

Innovation Academy. “We are hoping the modelwill roll out nationally,” Lloyd says. “We willmake the content available to anyone who wantsit and we’ll train trainers who want to bring thismodel back to their universities.”

Ultimately, he says, producing skilled, ICT-and business-savvy arts and humanitiesgraduates is the key to ensuring long-termsustainability for arts and humanities research.Equipped with creative, independent thought,self-motivation and innovation, it is hoped thatfuture generations of PhD graduates and post-doctoral researchers will go further in exploringthe potential for the role of arts and humanitiesin modern society, the economy and in industry.

Prendergast says: “We shouldn’t try to second-guess where PhDs will end up. They may createtheir own jobs in the knowledge industries of thefuture, and this is something we want to support.”

Such support is vital not only for sustainingarts and humanities research in the future butfor capitalising on opportunities for society asa whole. Lloyd concludes: “There are newmarkets to come out of this, and if we’re notproducing the graduates with the appropriateskills and training, then we’re going to miss outon being part of them.”

Diversification, integration and digital innovation arekey to sustaining arts and humanities research, sayTrinity College scholars. Maeve O’Lynn reports

Hegarty is keen to see Trinity College embrace.In addition to these partnerships, the provostadvocates “stronger engagements with the creativeindustries”. Prendergast agrees. “It is importantthat we reach out to industry and try to collaborateby showing industry what we can do. We canachieve this by showcasing the talents of ourstaff and students. We want to enable organiccollaborations by facilitating interactions between

Hegarty ‘the arts and humanities must diversify’Prendergast ‘collaborate’


new perspectives enter a new phase

Documents