Access to the Grid: Interfacing the Humanities with Grid Technologies

There can be little doubt that large-scale Grid
infrastructures have transformed the way research
is done in some parts of the physical sciences.
High-profile enterprises such as the Large Hadron
Collider would be of little use without computational
infrastructures which are capable of supporting
the vast quantities of data they produce. Although
these branches of science are unique in terms
of the volumes of data they contend with, other
fields are encountering equivalent research problems
which require Grid services and resources, and
cognate technologies, tailored according to their own
disciplinary needs. The humanities are no exception:
recent engagement between the humanities and
'e-Science" (e.g. http://www.ahessc.ac.uk/initi
ative-projects) have shown that their complex
data and research processes can be supported and
enhanced using Grids and associated technologies.
This workshop will seek to scope practical points
of engagement, both current and potential, between
Grid infrastructures in the UK and Europe. It
will place particular emphasis on the portals and
interface technology that humanists need in order
to use Grids. The event will bring together leading
European practitioners of digital humanities (many
of whom have already done significant work with
Grid infrastructures) together with representatives of
key Grid infrastructure organizations, including EGI
and the NGS. It will attempt to produce a roadmap of
which areas of the humanities have most to gain from
using Grids, and which do not; and how the Grid and
humanities research communities can better work
together in the future.
This event comes within the context of a major
change in European research e-infrastructure. The
Enabling Grids for E-Science (EGEE) will be replaced
by the European Grid Initiative (http://web.eu-e
gi.eu/). Given the latter’s emphasis on federating
National Grid Initiatives (NGIs), it is important
that the digital humanities position themselves to
gain maximum advantage both nationally and at a
European level.
This workshop is being held with the support of JISC
(http://www.jisc.ac.uk)
Full day workshop: Monday, 5 July
The workshop programme is available
online: http://ahessc.ac.uk/grid-workshop-pr
ogramme